Halloween is coming, JU....in honor of that spooky "holiday", I offer this post. I hope you enjoy it.
The story that follows is an original by yours truly, and was posted, as you can see, on 7/24/04 on a site called "homepage of the dead". Go to the link if you're curious. The site is dedicated to the "Living Dead" films of George Romero, and all the fan fiction there has to take place in that world, or has to have something to do with cannibalistic zombies. So, this story is derivative, yes, but the characters and situations are all my own.
This takes place in the South End of Wheeling, West Virginia, where I was raised. I actually went to Wheelng Middle School from 1979-1982; the layout of the school in the story is as I remember it.
I'm proud to say that this story was once up to 5 out of 5 stars on the site, as rated by the readers, but has since settled to 4 out of 5....still, not too shabby.
That's All Folks
(© Robert Denham, added 24-Jul-2004)
The survivors had been dragging in, in fits and starts, for days. Many of them had been trucked in from other stations that were no longer in operation. It was becoming more than clear, however, that their numbers were beginning to dwindle. That was actually good, however, because they were starting to run low on food and supplies, though this fact was being kept pretty much on the down low.
Hysterical sobs and shocked silence mingled in the crowded gymnasium, which by this time was beginning to smell like sweat and vomit. And fear. Word had gotten in, with the other refugees, that many of the other rescue stations had been taken out by now, and the feeling of anxiety was so palpable in the air that you could almost reach out and grab a handful.
The sound of gunfire echoed across the city, as units of local, county, and state police and what remained of the National Guard (that which hadn't been absorbed by units of regular Army) fought to control the spread of the violence. The "wave of homicidal mania", as the TV newscasters had been calling it, kept moving.
There were those who still thought that the ones committing the acts were mad with some kind of sickness that drove them to cannibalism, or that some kind of mass hysteria had affected them, but Tune knew….he'd seen it with his own eyes, and more than once over the last week.
People affected with a sickness didn't get up and start coming after you when you blew several large holes in their torsos. People affected with madness didn't open their eyes and come back to life when you knew damn well they were dead. This was something else altogether. The Einsteins and techs were killing themselves trying to find big words to explain it all away, but it all boiled down to one thing: the dead were coming back. Period. Was this Judgement Day? Or Judgement Week, maybe? Gabriel's Horn hadn't sounded, and Jesus hadn't appeared to take the Saved to Heaven with Him, but the graves were sure as hell giving up their dead. In some cases, literally. It seemed as though anyone who'd died in the past year or so had been given some kind of cosmic "get out of jail free" card. It was hard not to envision cemeteries with dozens, or even hundreds, of headstones standing tall and hard above the squirming dead contained within metal crypts below six feet of dirt. Some actually had made it to the surface, however, as the opened graves found here and there had given testimony.
Sgt. Jim "Looney" Tune was a Regular US Army non-com. The Guard hadn't been able to contain the situation, and things had continued to deteriorate in cities across the country (and indeed the whole world, from what Tune had been able to glean from a few official memos he'd glimpsed). The President, eleven days ago, had sought Congress's permission to declare Martial Law, and to turn things over to the regular armed forces. His request was granted, and the army, navy, Marines and air force were activated and tossed into the fight. Tune and his unit were deployed, first to a place called Chester, WV, then a small town further south, called Follansbee, where they had absorbed a couple of Guard units and cleared the area of its wandering corpses. They then moved south again, to Wheeling, WV. There, they hunkered down in the fairly easily defensible position of Wheeling Middle School, on the south end of town, which had been designated as an Official Rescue Station. Wheeling was a bigger city, however, than either Chester or Follansbee, and it was proving more difficult to clear the larger urban areas.
The front of the school consisted of two sets of opposing steps that led up from the street, perhaps twenty feet or so. From up here, they were able to keep watch up and down Chapline Street, which ran in front of the school, the side streets and across the football/baseball field to the bank of the Ohio River. Only a few street-level doors were vulnerable, and of course the colonel had ordered them barricaded, nailed shut (if a fire broke out, Tune mused, they were all screwed) and then placed guards on them in rotating shifts. Snipers had been stationed on the roof, scanning the streets below for any more survivors……or zombies (as the more realistic among them were now calling them; those Tune saw as in denial still referred to them as "things").
Facing the building, the left-hand set of steps led up to the school's main entrance and the office, which had been commandeered as a command post. The right led up to the cafeteria area and the gym, where the survivors were being attended by various Red Cross workers, civilian and military medical personnel.
Tune stood outside the cafeteria door, having a smoke in the warmth of the humid summer night. It had rained last evening, and the air was clean, if still close. The power had gone down for the third time six days ago. They were using a generator to keep the lights on, but the air was out. The school, so full as it was of refugees, was sweltering, and the odor festered thickly in the heat. He walked over to the top step, took a long drag, and turned his gaze upward.
The stars, now that the power was out, were bright, clear flecks of twinkling blue against a dark velvet background. They showed sharply here and there amid the tattered remains of the clouds drifting above.
A tank moved slowly down the street below, and Tune waved to the soldiers hitching a ride. He was glad to have drawn this duty station; a buddy of his in another unit had been chosen to guard the off-ramp from I-70. That poor joker was out there in the weather, and wide open to attack. All it took was a moment's miscalculation. Not that anything was moving on I-70, anyway. When the worst had finally begun to hit, most people had tried to get out of the cities, and that had only served to clog all the major arteries. The I-70 bridge through Wheeling, and the tunnel before (or after, depending on which way you were coming) it, was just as clogged as the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, or the Golden Gate in San Francisco. The jam had been horrendous, and many people, suffering from the stress and heat, actually had died in their cars, only to come back to "life" minutes later. The jam had created a kind of smorgasbord for the zombies, and a large crowd of perhaps three or four dozen of them had swooped among the stalled and jammed, but still occupied, cars in a frenzy. Stories of the Wheeling police's adventures on the bridge were quickly becoming the stuff of local legend. They had had to fight their way onto the bridge itself, then, as they went from car-to-car, they simply shot the "zombified" people through the windows. It was feared that many who were not zombies at the outset might have become so a few minutes after the cops arrived and took care of things. But then, accidents do happen.
Tune continued to smoke his cigarette, letting the smell of the tobacco (and who knew what else) slowly crowd out the sick odor that had settled into his nasal passages. He squinted against the smoke, and considered what he knew.
Things weren't looking good for the living. The scale was beginning to tilt in favor of the dead. According to official reports, several nearby cities had been lost to them; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was a deserted husk, occupied by wandering crowds of mobile corpses. Weirton, West Virginia had been a battleground for several days; but then the steel mill there had caught fire and had raged out of control. More than half the city was gone, so what was left had been abandoned to the dead. Chester and Follansbee, the first places Tune and his unit had come to, being smaller areas, were still in human hands, but it was starting to go flaky there, too. Directly across the river from Wheeling, Bridgeport, Ohio, was in control, but for how long was anyone's guess. There were just too many of them.
The problem, of course, was that people died every day. From illness, old age, injury, whatever. They died and, unless action was taken immediately, then got up again. They then became part of a vast army; an army that had, at long last, found a way to shrug off its political, social, religious and/or ideological differences. In Israel, Muslims, Jews and Christians marched together at long last; Catholics and protestants, skinheads and blacks, gays and straights, Republicans and Democrats, cops and robbers, gun nuts and anti-gun nuts, pro-choice and pro-life. They all marched together now. And they killed. And killed. And their ranks grew.
It had become a matter of course to shoot a corpse in the head just after death had been confirmed, but how many people died alone, where such precautions couldn't be taken? How many had tried to escape, and had found themselves trapped by the hordes of dead cannibals? Too many, it seemed.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, he considered his family, and wondered how they were faring. His father had died just over nine months before, and not for the first time in the past couple of weeks, he wondered if, given the present circumstances, he might not bump into the old man somewhere along the way.
Tune's gaze moved to the street below. Up the way, just beyond the far northwestern corner, a lone man wandered down the middle of the street, lost in the deep night shadows under the trees that lined the residential street there. Tune, smoking thoughtfully, watched him in silence as he came on, staggering. Was he a Dead Man Walking? Or was he a live man, a refugee, shocky and in need of help? As the man drew closer, Tune brought his M-16 to bear. He closed one eye, and with the other, gazed through the cumbersome night vision scope mounted to the top. He moved the rifle gently from side to side, trying to find his target within the small circle of the scope. He also thumbed off the safety, just in case.
The man's image, greenish-tinged through the scope, swept past to the right within the scope's field of view. Tune carefully brought the rifle's scope into line with the target, and scanned it up and down. He could see why the man was moving with that staggering, shuffling gait: he kept tripping over his intestines. The fleshy ropes hung loosely from a gaping hole torn in his stomach. Chunks, large and small, had been clawed and bitten out of his face, arms and abdomen. Blood had soaked his pants and what remained of his shirt, and had darkened the white of what had probably been brand-new sneakers. Expensive ones, to boot, from the look. What the well-dressed ghoul was wearing.
Tune waited patiently for a shot to echo from above him, when the snipers did their work. By the time the zombie reached the corner of the school, however, there had been no shot. Tune squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked, and the top of the zombie's head, from the top of the nose up, disappeared in a splash of gore and gray matter. It staggered backward sharply, then to the side, and slumped to the pavement with a sound like a bag of dirt. At the sound of the gunshot, sudden screams issued from inside the building.
"What the hell was that?" came a voice from above. The muted sound of running boots.
"You guys awake up there?" Tune asked, smiling, lowering his rifle. "Snipers my ass."
"Go screw, Looney;" a voice said with a chuckle.
"Got one, huh?" The voice had come from behind.
Tune turned around to find the colonel standing there. He stiffened and saluted. "Yes, sir;" he said sharply.
"At ease, Sergeant." The older man turned and waved to two privates to go down and drag the corpse out into the field, where, when he had deemed that there were enough of them, a bonfire would be started. There were about fifteen to twenty out there so far. The colonel looked up and said flatly, "You men on the roof, if I can disturb you for a moment, please take time to watch over the two young men I've just sent to retrieve that body."
A dejected round of "Yes, sirs," drifted down to them. He turned back to Tune.
"I have to start sending patrols out, Looney," he began, "and since you're one of the senior non-coms here, I'm putting you in charge of the first. We're in control of this area now, but those zombies, or whatever they are, are starting to drift down this way again. The number of patrols in this area is going to increase dramatically in the next few hours, I'm afraid. We'd like to sit tight here, I know; but if we did that, we'd have thousands of them milling all around us. The best defense is still a good offense, get me?"
A helicopter, a gunship, flew past, low, a bright spotlight cast downward onto the street below. It veered around and hovered for a few minutes, casting its light down onto the two soldiers and their burden. "Yes, sir," Looney said, raising his voice over the sound of the chopper's blades. He had known this would come, but it still made his bowels loosen slightly at the thought of being out there, so exposed, in the open. He wasn't afraid of combat; he'd seen action as a green private in Desert Storm, and had exchanged fire with various belligerents in various unacknowledged locations and missions over the years, but this was different. This was an enemy that had no weapons, it was true, but it was also an enemy that wouldn't go down if you didn't hit them just right. They just kept on coming. It was also an enemy that depended on Death to swell its ranks, rather than to diminish them. That was a hell of a psychological edge. After all, everybody died.
"Sir, do they know yet why this is happening?" he asked.
The colonel, an aging man whose career had begun in the early 1970s as a volunteer in one of the last rounds of troops sent to Vietnam, shook his head and shrugged. "Haven't heard anything. Nothing that the big wheels feel like sharing with a cog like me, anyway. Last I heard, they were still sticking to the Venus probe story."
Tune nodded. The probe story. The Venus probe had returned to Earth a little more than three weeks ago, suffused with some sort of odd radiation. It had exploded in the atmosphere, and was scattered over several hundred square miles of the continental United States. The reanimation of corpses had begun shortly thereafter, but it seemed to Tune that that had been a coincidence. It was a mighty small satellite to have irradiated the entire country, let alone the entire planet. Besides, he'd overheard two military doctors talking, and what he'd heard only served to solidify what he'd felt for some time; that this was some sort of cover-up. They really had no idea what was happening. Or, if they did, they were keeping it close to the vest.
One of the doctors had said that he'd treated radiation sickness before, when there had been an accident with a tactical nuke. What he was seeing now bore no similarity to what he'd seen then. In his mind, there was no radiation. The other doctor pointed out that perhaps the radiation was of a different type, unable to be detected by Geiger counters, or perhaps it affected living tissue differently. Then how, the first doctor had asked, do they know it existed at all? No, he'd said, there was something else going on. Other things bore that out; the fact, for example, that if a subject was bitten by an "ambulatory corpse", as he'd put it, he or she almost without fail died a painful and often slow death and became one of them. Survivors of zombie bites, even superficial ones, were rare. It seemed, the doctors had agreed, that they were dealing with some sort of fatal virus that was passed from the dead to the living. But then, how had the whole thing started? And all at once, at that? the second doctor asked. A dead body didn't come back to life by itself. There had to be a catalyst of some kind, somewhere. The first doctor had no answers there.
Suddenly, a single shot, followed by a piercing round of screams, jerked Tune from his thoughts. It had come from inside, and he hefted his rifle and ran into the cafeteria behind the colonel, who had drawn his sidearm. One of the doctors raised his hand. "It's alright;" he said. "We had one die on us….they carried him away and put him down." The colonel sighed. It had been decided on high that, when a "guest" of a rescue station died, they would immediately be taken away to a more secure location----in this case, into the shower area in the locker room----and "put down". Here, since they did it in the shower area, they turned the water on first. Less mess that way.
" 'Put down'….like a rabid dog…my God….." the old man ran a shaking hand across his forehead. He shook his head and sighed. "What have we had to become?" he asked. "You know sergeant," he began, gazing off into space, "when I joined up in '71, I saw a lot of shit in 'Nam, but I never thought I'd find myself standing guard over the end of the world." He turned to face Tune. Behind him, three men carried the dripping remains of the recently deceased visitor to the shower out to the burn pile. A voice, lost in the crowd and presumably a family member of the corpse, wailed miserably. "Your patrol leaves in two hours…" the colonel said. "I'd suggest you get some rest, if possible." He turned, holstered his weapon and moved out into the main hallway, past the despondent residents of the South side of Wheeling, and other areas, that lined the corridor.
Tune walked to an empty corner near the door, slumped into it and took out his CD player, cranking it up loud enough to drown out the misery around him. As he closed his eyes, Elvis Presley, his voice issuing from the headset, crooned him to a light, shifting, and ultimately unsatisfying sleep.
In his gauzy dreams, Tune found himself wandering in a dark graveyard that looked like something out of one of those old 1930s Universal Pictures horror movies. Fog covered the weed-choked, shadowy ground, and a cloud-shrouded moon, filtered through a scraggly, ominous-looking tree, gave weak light to the area around him. Then, as he watched, gray, dirt-clotted hands broke stiffly through thick, grassy soil, pushing their way to the surface as he struggled to get away. The hands surged out of the ground all around him, waving desperately in the open air, clawing for purchase, grabbing at his ankles. He stumbled a lot in the dream, and his legs didn't carry him as quickly or steadily as he'd have liked. Not at all. Suddenly he was running, or trying to run, as a mob of muddy, maggoty, filth-ridden corpses chased after him, moaning and screeching incomprehensibly.
"Sarge….Sarge, wake up." A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. He came awake suddenly, still in the clutch of the dream, and grabbed the hand, twisting it. "AAARGH!!" the private yelled. Tune suddenly knew what he was doing then, and released the hand.
"Oh, God….sorry, Curtis. You okay? Bad dream….." he sighed.
"Yeah, so I gathered," the young man said, a little testily, massaging his hand. He relaxed; "It's okay…I could tell you were having a bad dream by the way you were moving around. It's not easy to have good dreams right now," he observed knowingly.
"No, it isn't…." Tune answered. He inhaled deeply, then let it out in a rush. "Time for patrol?"
"Yeah, they're ready when you are."
"Suit up, boys," he called. "Let's do it."
The patrol squad consisted of six men; Tune in the lead, a corporal named Baker, and four privates. Dawn was just showing its white-blue face as a faint, misty glow in the east, and it was still dark as the men moved silently down the deserted, litter-strewn sidewalk. Somewhere (incongruously, Tune thought, considering the events of the recent past), a bird twittered, welcoming the open of a new day.
It was a typical older, urban neighborhood; vacant lots filled with straggly weeds, old buildings spangled with new signs, maybe a newer coat of paint and trim; houses on side streets carefully kept as their owners attempted to keep that gone-to-seed look from taking the area over completely. A lot of bars, and a few small shops of different types filled in the storefronts. Across the street, a car had plowed into a row of parked cars; the rear end of the vehicle was angled out into the street. One of the privates wondered aloud, with dark humor, if the driver had walked away dead or alive. A light breeze moved up from the south, riffling some papers in the gutter, and setting a paper soda cup, with the lid and straw still in place, in motion. Tune glimpsed what looked like another patrol moving across the street several blocks down. The faint, distant sound of chopper blades and gunfire filtered to them from somewhere. Other than that, there was no sound at all besides the muted sound of boots moving slowly on the cracked and worn pavement, and the growing sound of the birds. Darkened windows glared down at the men as they passed. Doors stood in mute testimony to the dangers that might lurk there. There could be anything behind any of them, a fact of which they all were highly aware.
"What do we do first, Sarge?" Baker asked.
Tune stood silently for a moment, considering his options. He'd been given no real orders, only to patrol and to keep an eye open for looters or any survivors. "Well, I guess we could start with a house-to-house and building-to-building search of the block. That could take hours, but other than wandering around out here, I'm really not sure what we can do. At least we can check the area for any survivors that may still be holed up here."
"Where do you want to start?" a private, Phillips, asked shakily. He was from one of the Guard units that had been absorbed by the regular forces a few days ago. In civilian life, he'd been an electronics clerk at Wal-Mart, selling TVs, CDs and DVD players. The Guard was just something he did a couple weekends a month and during the summer, for extra cash and for help with college. He felt out of place here, with more experienced and disciplined soldiers. Tune glanced at him and noticed a huge red pimple that had appeared on the end of his nose; he saw more pimples on that smooth, peach-fuzzed face, and wondered sadly just how old Pfc. Phillips was. Probably no more than a year or two out of high school, Tune figured. He should be hanging out somewhere with his buddies, or screwing his girlfriend in the back seat of his car, not out here, patrolling on the edge of the apocalypse. Oh, well…..such is life. Or death.
"We'll start with this one….." Tune said, and slapped the aged brown bricks of the old apartment building before them. He stepped up the three crumbling, cement steps to the door. It was a newer door, perhaps ten years old, in an ancient frame. Trying the doorknob, he found it locked. "Move back," he said, and raised his leg to kick it open. His boot connected solidly, and the old frame gave at once. The door was solid, however, and only opened a bit, hanging askew on its hinges. Tune adjusted his stance and shouldered it, with a grunt and a muted crunch, the rest of the way open. He stepped cautiously inside the darkened foyer, swinging his rifle tensely from side-to-side. Two apartment doors were visible in the gloom. "You three, stay out here," he said to Baker and two of the privates. "Holler if you see anything."
"Oh, we'll holler," Baker assured him.
Tune grinned and indicated the other two. "You two, come with me." The two privates, Phillips and Merckle, came up the steps. The three disappeared into the darkness of the building's ground level.
Tune motioned the two to stand behind him, and positioned himself before the door on the right. He tried the knob, and found it locked, as well. Just for laughs, he knocked. If something answers, he thought with a sudden, testicle-shriveling chill, I'm going to shit myself. Nothing did, however. He stepped back, steadied himself, and kicked the door open. This door wasn't anywhere near as solid as the front door, and it gave instantly.
It hit them all together, like the flat side of a cast-iron frying pan swung by Sammy Sosa. The Smell. They had all smelled it before, at one time or another in life, especially in the past week or so. The smell of Death. The apartment reeked. Private Merckle moaned, and stepped back, pulling up the small white surgical mask that was suspended around his neck. He had treated it heavily with cologne, as well, and Tune thought that he smelled like the restroom in a gay bar. Not that Tune actually knew what that might smell like, mind you.
The door swung open. Dawn had made more inroads in the sky, and there was just enough light to see. Tune surveyed the apartment; it was furnished with unmatched, Goodwill Thrift Shop or Salvation Army castoffs, although the stuff was in decent shape. One entire wall was covered by an enormous entertainment center. Stereo and video equipment, including a large-screen TV, rested there together. According to Phillips', who was drawing on his occupational experience, it was very high-end stuff. What the occupant or occupants hadn't spent on furniture, they had invested in electronics, he observed dryly.
The place was fairly neat, however, and was decorated, if that was the right word, with framed posters of heavy-metal concert tours and bands, horror movies (all three mostly with a satanic bent) and such. Knickknacks such as skull ashtrays, tabletop gargoyles, upside down crosses with snakes curled around; that sort of thing. Foot-high, twin statues of horned demons holding the bodies of the damned in their claws stood guard on either side of the fireplace. Over the fireplace itself (which held an ancient gas heater that might have been new when Roosevelt was in office), in an ornately carved wooden frame of skull and skeleton patterns, was a large picture of the devil sitting on a throne of skulls and bones. The throne was supported by the world underneath. Flames of red, yellow and orange licked the edges of the frame in the background. Black candles lined the mantle beneath it. Hung above the kitchen door, where one might place a cross or crucifix, was a large red and black metal pentagram.
From the décor and the castoff furniture, Tune thought it was the kind of place a young adult or older adolescent would live in. Perhaps a first apartment. On the couch, Tune could see a slumped form. He plucked his flashlight from his belt, and switched it on. The circle of light bathed the form in a bright glare, and it was indeed a young man, slumped sideways against the cushion, a large exit wound in the back of his head. With the lack of a visible entrance wound in front, and the amount of blood that had drained onto his clothes, Tune supposed that he'd shot himself in the mouth. The wall behind the couch was decorated unevenly, sprayed as it was with a large smear of red flecked with gray. In his left hand, which had fallen to the cushions, he held a huge .44 magnum. Tune entered the room, followed closely by the two younger men.
"Look at all this stuff….what was he, some kind of Satanist?" Merckle, his voice muffled behind the mask, asked.
"Maybe, at one time," Tune said, "but look here;" he crouched before the stiff form, which was dressed to the nines in a charcoal gray suit and tie, and shone the light onto its right hand, which lay on one thigh. A silver crucifix, its chain draped over the back of the hand, lay nestled in the folds of shrinking, grayish-white flesh. There was a Bible open next to it. Tune's light moved to it, and he saw that one passage was highlighted, though the words had already been printed in red. The marker had been tossed casually to the floor, so the highlighting had been done here, just, or at least not long, before. "John 14:6," he read. " 'I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.'" He stood up and sighed. "Looks like when it all hit the fan here and Satan really came, he wasn't ready after all," Tune said, his tone serious, not mocking. "Hope he made some peace with God before he did it." He stood, looking at the corpse. "There are no atheists----or Satanists, I guess----in foxholes," he said softly, to no one in particular. He turned to the two privates. "Let's sweep the apartment, just in case." The sweep took only a few minutes, and they left the former occupant to whatever might await him. They gathered before the door to the other apartment, and prepared to repeat the process. On the other side of the door, however, they heard a rather clear thump. They all looked at each other, wide-eyed and silent. Phillips' throat clicked loudly as he swallowed heavily. Another, more muffled thump issued from within the apartment, and Tune brought his gun up. "Get ready," he warned. He stepped back, took aim, and pulled the trigger, filling the door with holes. The others followed suit.
Baker and his charges jumped inside the front doorway, rifles at the ready, to see what was going on. Tune kicked this door open, as well, and stumbled forward when he found that it wasn't locked, or even latched, but rather just closed. He fell into the apartment, and sprawled unceremoniously to the floor. In an instant, cold, rough hands seized on him, and he shrieked as the occupant, fresh with at least three brand-spanking new orifices in his body (but none, unfortunately, in his head), fell on him with frenzied relish. Whoever this had been, he had been old, and Tune looked up into the face of his attacker and saw, with amused detachment, that one side of his upper denture plate had come loose, and it sagged in his mouth like an attic door in a ceiling. He punched the creature hard in the face, but it had almost no effect, other than to make the loose upper plate wiggle comically. He then grabbed the corpse by its neck and thrust it away. It came back, scuttling swiftly along the floor like a lobster on the ocean bottom. There was a loud crack, and it jumped once, a smoking hole appearing in its side, as Private Phillips, collecting himself, discharged his weapon. The shot had gone awry, however, because of the shaking of his hands. The zombie, not at all affected, fell once again on Tune, who tried again to push it off. The smell of rotting flesh, coming in waves off the corpse, filled his nostrils, much like the smell of the rescue station had. He much preferred the smell of the station; it was at least the smell of life.
The thing that freaked him out most, Tune thought in the haphazard fashion of panic, was that it wasn't making any sound….all this effort, and no sound. Of course, to make sound, you had to be breathing, and the last breath of air had left this fellow many days ago, from the look. The creature clawed stiffly at Tune's shirt, and opened its mouth wide in a grotesque, elliptic "O", its jaw jutting to one side, and drew itself closer. Tune then saw something that, for some reason, royally freaked him out: not only was there no sound coming from its mouth, but there was no emotion in its eyes. There was nothing in those vacant, staring eyes to indicate such violence. No movement of the brow, no flash of anger, no widening of the lids or pupils, nothing. Only the vacant stare and relaxed features of its face. The only indication was its mouth, wide-open and slack-jawed. And crawling with maggots, Tune now saw. "….Oh God…." he croaked. They're inside him!! They're eating him from the inside out…As further evidence, a fully-grown housefly buzzed out of his throat. It occurred to Tune that he had never seen a zombie up close like this. To his left, he saw Baker push his way through the stunned privates, lowering Phillips' still-raised weapon with one hand. He stepped forward, grabbed the still struggling old man by his shirt, and pulled him to the right. He brought up his .9mm and fired point-blank at the zombie, who stiffened, its head flipped backward. It fell to the floor like a fresh-cut tree.
Tune swallowed. He was shaking. He sat up, legs splayed out before him, quivering knees bent upward. He rested his arms on his knees, trying vainly to steady them. Laying his head on his arms, he took a deep, quivering breath. After a few seconds, he looked up at Baker "Thanks, man."
The corporal nodded slowly and said, pokerfaced, "You scream like a girl."
Looking askance at his subordinate, Tune chuckled. "Fuck you, asshole," he said with a shaky smile. He took out a cigarette and lit it with some effort, his hand jittering crazily. As he held it in his fingers, jerky little curls of smoke issued from its end, resulting from the motions made by his hand. He drew a shallow drag, and huffed it out. "Let's check the place out, guys," he said, and moved to get up.
Baker placed a hand on his shoulder. "It'll keep….just sit for a few minutes, Looney." He paused, unsure….he had called Tune, his superior, by his nickname. Tune hadn't seemed to notice, though.
Tune nodded unsteadily, in agreement, then said "I never saw one up close and personal like that before." His voice was flat and distant. "They were always some distance away."
After he had taken a few minutes to pull himself together, Tune and the others swept this apartment, as well.
They found, in the back bedroom, two corpses, side-by side in the bed; one an older woman, presumably the man's wife, and another woman, younger, but with features like those with Down's Syndrome often had. Their bodies were each covered with a boil of maggots, and a softy humming drone filled the faintly corrupted air in the room, as flies lit on and flew off the bodies at will. Merckle stifled a hiccup, choking back the remains his breakfast. After a few seconds discussion, they figured that the younger woman was the couple's child. They each had bullet holes in the side of their head, and after closer examination of the old man's corpse, which also showed a previous head wound, it was decided that he had probably killed them, and then tried to kill himself, but failed, only wounding himself and dying later. This hypothesis was borne out by the presence of the gun in question, found lying on the floor, beside the bed and half-covered by the blanket, and the fact that the both the women's bodies had teeth marks in them and had been chewed on. Apparently, the old man, now a zombie, had tried to munch on the corpses, but found them not to his liking, as they were probably not fresh enough. The lack of odor in the apartment, despite the presence of three swelling corpses, was explained by the fact that three windows had been left open, creating a cross-ventilation effect.
The squad swept the rest of the building, which consisted of two more apartments and a basement, but found nothing else.
They moved out into the street, and checked two more buildings, but found them deserted.
There was a bar across the street, called the Double J….Tune led his men over to the other side of the street, and directed three of them to head up the street and check things out. "Stay in touch by radio; if you see anything at all, call for help."
Baker nodded and led the two privates up the way, their eyes scanning carefully from side-to-side. Tune realized that he had again kept Merckle and Phillips; it was almost as though he felt especially responsible for them, for some unconscious reason.
Tune waited till Baker and his men were up the street a ways, then motioned to the two privates to follow him. He went to the door of the Double J, and found it had been jimmied. Whoever might be inside, it probably wasn't a zombie; they didn't jimmie locks open. He pulled the door open, and looked inside. It was utterly dark in there, as there were no windows at all. He took hold of his flashlight again, and instructed the others to do the same. Tune entered the building first, swinging his light in a searching arc. Something squealed faintly, and Tune glimpsed movement in the dimness just outside the circle of light thrown by his flashlight. The movement was far up the bar, and he realized that the place was probably infested with rats. "Be careful…rats," he warned the men. Rabies was the least of their worries these days, but he wasn't sure there would be treatment readily available.
He looked around. Beer signs, sports posters.…typical bar décor. A large jukebox sat hulking in the center of the wall to the left, between tables. Making their way up the bar, Tune told Merckle to go toward the back and check things out. He didn't think there was anything or anyone here, but you never knew. As for Tune, he swung around behind the bar itself. Rats had gathered there, but scurried quickly aside at his approach.
"Care for a drink?" he asked Phillips, who wasn't sure how to answer.
The cash register had been emptied; probably the result of the door lock being broken open, he mused aloud. With a practiced eye, Tune surveyed the hard stuff displayed on the wide racks by the mirror. There were several empty spots, he noticed; probably went out the door with the register receipts.
He moved his hand, index finger extended, from side-to-side before the myriad bottles until he found what he-----"Ahh….here you are," he said softly. He reached up and drew out a near-full half-gallon of Jack Daniels. He turned to face the bar, and looked now for a glass. Finding one, he placed it on the bar beside his flashlight. "Sure you won't have one with me?"
"Um, sarge," the private began; "isn't that…um…looting?"
Tune smiled broadly. "It sure is; tell you what….I'll leave a dollar on the bar; how's that?"
The private considered this for a moment, then nodded with a cockeyed grin. He placed his rifle on the bar and sat down on one of the stools. "Set'em up," he said.
Tune smiled again, then turned and yelled for Merckle. The young soldier came up from the back, zipping the fly in his camos. "Restroom's back there," he said.
Tune nodded; "Have a snort, private? I'm buying." Merckle looked at Phillips, who smiled.
"Okay….since you're buying…." he said lightly. Tune nodded and set two more glasses on the bar. He poured about three fingers in each glass. "I used to tend bar, years ago. It was fun;" he said, with a small catch in his voice. He raised his glass, as did the others, and tried to think of an appropriate toast. At last, he smiled softly. "….To the world as we knew it," he said, mildly, and drained his glass at a gulp. Merckle gulped his as well, ending with an audible "aaahhh…." and with a flourish slammed his glass upside down to the bar. "My dad used to own a bar," he said. Tune nodded in admiration. Phillips had choked on his, however, coughing out a gasp. Outside, they could hear, a chopper passed low over the building.
"C'mon boy, finish up…don't waste good whiskey," Tune admonished jauntily. After some effort, the younger man managed to gag the rest down. Merckle and Tune both applauded.
As they waited for Phillips to catch his breath, the radio crackled, and a strained voice issued forth: "Attention…attention! This is Colonel Tucker; all units now on patrol, return to base…we are under attack! I repeat..return….." A struggled scream, followed by gunfire, then several crashes, and the message was cut sharply off, replaced by hissing static.
Baker's voice, crackling with sharp static, came over next and filled the bar. "Uh……Sarge, you better get out here."
Tune and the two others exchanged glances, then grabbed their rifles and hurried for the door. Bursting outside, they found Baker and his men standing a few doors up from the bar, looking north. Tune's breath sucked in as he took in what they were watching.
There, heading south down the street, was a mob, dozens, perhaps even hundreds (or thousands, it was impossible to tell from their viewpoint) strong, of staggering, shuffling corpses. "Looks like the dam burst;" private Merckle said, his voice unsteady.
The chopper circled overhead, firing into the crowd with its machine gun and cannons. Explosions bloomed in the midst of them, and zombies were hurled into the air, some in pieces. Two tanks ground through the crowd, firing left and right. Another chopper joined the fight seconds later, yet the dead kept on moving. Tune brought up his rifle and sighted in one target. He pulled the trigger and the creature dropped neatly, but was immediately replaced by dozens more. Baker and his men opened fire as well, simply spraying the advancing corpses with gunfire. More explosions, and more zombies tossed into the air, but there were just so damn many of them. Tune put his hand on Baker's shoulder. "You're just wasting ammo. Let's get back to the station." The six men hurried away, firing behind them, heading west on 36th street, the sound of battle raging around them. They found their way blocked already, however, as several shuffling corpses moved across their path, and Tune had to lead his men several blocks farther south, swinging north once they were away from the advancing corpses. It entered his mind to just keep on running.
They arrived back at the rescue station minutes later, only to find it already in the hands of the enemy. It looked like the Alamo. Soldiers on the second floor fired out of broken windows, shooting wildly into the swarming mass of rotting dead. The snipers were still on the roof; they had been joined by a machine gunner or two, and shot into the crowd below. The effect was negligible, however. Endless gunshots and screams issued from within the building, as staring, shuffling corpses wandered in and out. One corpse, hunched in the street, clutched an arm and was munching away contentedly. Baker, in a rage, ran over to it and blew a hole in its head from perhaps two inches away. Another, a few yards to the right, chomped on a leg torn from below the knee. There were some obviously fresh corpses wandering in and out among the older dead. Many of them were in camos. To Tune's horror, he caught a glimpse of the colonel, his skin a pale gray-green, staggering out of the building, holding an arm firmly in both hands, and chewing on it.
"Now what, sarge?" Baker asked tensely. Tune was at a loss. He turned calmly to see several dozen of the dead making their way down 36th street behind them. The four privates were shaking, and Merckle had long since bent over and tossed up his whiskey. A yellowish trickle had begun to puddle between Phillips' boots, and Tune considered, out of some left field of nowhere, that he should have sent the two of them to check the back of the bar together.
They couldn't get back to their side, if indeed that side still existed, so that was out. They were in occupied territory, it seemed. Tune's voice dropped roughly, as he thought of the colonel. "The way I see it, we're soldiers. We're trained to fight. We're paid to fight. We go down, we go down swinging. That's all I can say." He aimed his rifle toward the oncoming crowd of zombies, and opened fire. Baker nodded stiffly, and followed. Merckle, Phillips and the other two privates, Orben and Keller, fired into the crowd around the school. They were exposed here, Tune knew, but where could they go? They could indeed keep running, he supposed, but to where? This was happening everywhere. How do you outrun something that was happening everywhere? Unknowingly, they all had that same, exact thought. The corpses were advancing. They had enveloped the area for several blocks around by now.
The snipers had started firing in the squad's direction, trying to aid them, but it was just too much for them. They would soon run out of ammunition, anyway. Tune caught a glimpse of Orben, who had stopped firing. He drew his sidearm, stuck it in his mouth and died, dropping to the street. Six or seven zombies were on him in an instant, and tore him apart with an almost religious fervor. Merckle, who had stood his ground rather than back off, and as a result had been left furthest up the street, was unable to hold them off and was outflanked. Assaulted by several zombies, he was dragged, screaming, away, lost amid the current of clutching, clawing dead. Tune tried to shoot him, but missed. Soon, his screams ended.
Once again, Tune was bothered by the silence of the crowd as they attacked. No emotion, no sound, nothing. They just kept coming.
As the crowd advanced on them, they continued to fight as best they could, but they all knew it was a futile struggle, at best. At length, they began to run out of ammunition and were surrounded. Baker swung his rifle, doing his best to keep them at bay, but it wasn't long before he and Phillips were dragged off, as well. Keller just dropped to the street in shock, and was set upon immediately. He made no sound at all as the dead fell on him, tearing him open and apart, dragging his entrails away and devouring his flesh. One of the snipers did him a favor by plugging him as soon as his helmet came off. Tune watched this with total equanimity. He felt the cold hands grabbing at him, snagging roughly at his clothes. He struggled, but knew it was useless. He was surrounded. Lost. He fell to the ground and felt a sharp pain in his calf. He turned and saw the top of a man's head (where, he noticed, his skin crawling, several maggots and cockroaches were trundling hither and yon in the dirt-matted hair), and felt the odd sensation of teeth chewing into his flesh. He drew his sidearm and screamed (??like a girl??), pulling the trigger and watching as the man rolled off to the street. One more down, but, as if drawn by his spilt blood, many more of the wandering dead made their way quickly over to him. Dozens more then followed this wave. Like ants to a picnic, he thought wildly, firing at random.
As he disappeared, enveloped by and pulled into the stinking, rotting crowd, Tune's last thought before struggling one last time, in the effort of turning his sidearm on himself, was: Damn, I forgot to leave a dollar on the bar……………..
- THE END -