Chpt. 1: Father - Son time.

[T.J. McFadden]

The following is the first chapter in an original zombie apocalypse story - I have six portions written and will be posting them every two days. Comments are appreciated.

Father-son time
by
T.J. McFadden

"Haven't you been watching the news?"
It's my wife, calling from her job. Last night was my night off. Andrew is upstairs, banging around, getting ready for the schoolbus. My wife just left for work forty minutes ago. Even over the phone, I can tell she's scared. She's too calm. She'll go hyper over small stuff, but when the shit really hits the fan, she suddenly has icewater in her veins.
I turn on the TV, tune to cable news. I used to be a news junkie, but I got tired of the endless political blame game. This doesn't look like politics.
"Carla, what am I looking at?"
"It's some plague. It's everywhere. People are going crazy, biting each other! It started last night."
Oh yeah. Everywhere. Riots in Jakarta. London is burning. The camera for the network studio in Times Square is showing a trio of bloody maniacs throwing themselves against the thick bulletproof glass of the studio. You can hear the fear in the voices of the announcers.
I switch to the local news. The first local station is off the air. The other two look like they're being operated by amateurs. Panicked amateurs. Film clips of horribly wounded, bloody people staggering down streets, others of clumps of people, screaming and bloody and running, chasing down people on the street, swarming over them like wolves on a caribou.
"Carla, come home. I'm keeping Andrew home from school."
"You'd better! It'll be hard for me to get home though. There's a big pileup on the highway. I think some of those people might have done it. Is that what rabies is like?"
"No, and it shouldn't be all over the world either. Not in a single night. Look, we'll figure this out when you get home. I'm going to barricade the first floor and load up the guns. Come home as fast as you can."
"I will. I love you."
"I love you too. Now go."
I lived in Florida while I was in the Air Force. Learned all about boarding up windows for hurricanes. I figure this is pretty much the same. But I never did that with a pistol at my hip. I nail the sheets of plywood over the window frames, making sure to not leave any seams big enough to get a finger in. On my street, some people are jumping in cars with handfuls of their possessions and driving off in a panic. A couple of my neighbors see me boarding up my windows and start doing the same.
There's a scream. Two screams, one of someone dying. The street is empty suddenly, except for one man standing over the bloody corpse of a woman. He's ripped her throat out with his teeth. The blood has sprayed out all over him. He looks at me. There's nothing human in those eyes. He screams, drops the corpse and runs towards me.
Screw warning shots. I drop my tools and have my pistol aimed as he closes. I don't hesitate a second. It's a Walther P-38, old german police issue, not a wonder nine high capacity but good solid hardware. I've never emptied the clip this fast before. Seven rounds of 9mm semi-jacketed hollowpoint to the chest. I'd swear the first couple of hits didn't even slow him down. He collapses ten feet from me. in a pool of blood.
I have my back to the wall of my house as I put my second clip into the pistol. Then I see the lady with her throat ripped out stagger to her feet. Slowly. I run towards her, pulling out my cell phone and hit 911 on speed dial. As the busy signal comes on, I slow down. She's not wounded. She's dead.
Really most sincerely dead. I could stick my fist through the hole in her throat. She isn't bleeding anymore.
She staggers towards me.
Then I hear the dead body behind me begin to move.
Day Two of the Ongoing Zombie Apocalypse.
The first floor seems darker with all the windows boarded over, even with the lights on. Andrew and I have been alternately surfing the net and watching the news channels for the last day. I tried to sleep but couldn't. Andrew dozed off and woke up with a screaming nightmare. I didn't need to ask what it was of. I could see that outside the window.
Fear colors every thought, every word, every thought. Like the very world has changed.
Perhaps it has.
It was late on the first day when word came out on TV about the Shamblers. They'd been missed at first, with the Screamers grabbing all the attention. Screamers were infected human beings, insane, violent, hungry, somehow bonding in packs and attacking uninfected humans.
Shamblers were walking corpses. Slow. Quiet. They wanted to bite you too. Their bite, or blood, was as infectious as that of the Screamers. Either one would turn a wounded human being into another Screamer. You could kill a Screamer but it took some doing. They didn't seem to feel pain. Neither did the shamblers but they also didn't seem to feel bullets. Last night someone on TV had said a shot to the head would kill the shamblers. I'll try it the next time I see one. A couple of the announcers used the term "zombies". Others say that some of the shamblers crawled off of mortuary slabs. There are messages on local channels to stay away from the hospitals, to go to emergency aid stations.
Carla isn't home yet. Her cell phone just takes my messages. Her job doesn't answer.
The phone rings.
I lunge at the phone, grab it desperately.
"Dave Simmons? This is Carl Schumer. We need you, in uniform in the office as soon as you can get here. Now. Bring a gun if you have one."
I know Carl. My boss at Ace Security Services Ltd, the son of the owner. "Mr Schumer, I'm unarmed security. I can't legally carry a gun on the job. This is a situation for police, not security guards."
"That situation has changed. I just negotiated a deal with the Mayor, but we need all the guards we can get. The police have been decimated. They were a lot of the first people bitten by the screamers. A lot of deputies and officers simply didn't show up today. Probably heading for the hills. You'll be acting as armed security, under the authority of the company. Dave, you've been with us for six years. We need the guys like you, the military vets."
"Sorry Carl, I can't go. I can't leave my 12 year old alone with this going on. My wife hasn't gotten back from work yet."
"You're supposed to have child care arrangements planned! We need you in here! We don't have time for personal interests!"
"Which is why you spent the last two days negotiating the price of our service to the city and only called me now? Why weren't we called the first day?"
Carl's voice cracks as I can hear him calm himself. "Look, you can argue all you want, once you're in here. But we need you in here now!"
"Looks like you better get those monkeys, Carl old buddy."
That actually silences him.
"Huh?"
"Remember three months ago when I said I needed a raise? You told me that a trained monkey could do my job. Well, better get those trained monkeys."
He's silent.
"You have a good day, Carl." I hang up the phone. Call mom. Her house is way better suited to survival than our place. Brick, with a wood burning fireplace for when the electricity goes. And it will go. Well water, out in one of the old suburbs, not part of the city. Dad put iron bars on the windows a few years before he died, when the neighborhood started to go. Chain link fence around the yard.
Mom is fine. My brother Dale and his wife Carol are fine, settling in with her. Dale's house is beautiful, but even less suited for this than mine. The food I ran over there yesterday, candles and odds and ends, they're fine too. I killed three people with my van on the trip there and back. I'm pretty sure they were Screamers or Shamblers. Pretty sure. Andrew and I would be over there now, but this is where my wife will come first.
She's tough. Tougher than me, sometimes. Not always the easiest person in the world to get along with. If anyone can do it, she'll make it back here.
I hate not knowing.
I look out into the street. The woman with her throat ripped out, the one I shot eighteen times, is still thrashing in the street.
Her head is undamaged.
It sounds like they're re-fighting Gettysburg over towards Ridgewood. About six blocks away. The pricey neighborhood. Some big gun collections over there, apparently, and big solid houses. Somebody's putting up a hell of a fight. Problem is, I can see Screamers from the second floor of our house, all converging on the gunfire. Running, jumping, screaming like maniacs.
This whole end of the world gig sounded a lot more fun when I was single. If I was single, I'd load up with ammo and go join the party.
One shot. I remember that no one can tell you're position if you fire only a single shot. At least according to Jim Bridger, the mountain man. Via Charlie Sheen in Red Dawn. I don't trust Sheen. I'll give Bridger's wisdom a chance.
Up to the second floor. My son's Ruger 10/22, plastic 30 round clip rammed in the well. I give him the .30 carbine that hasn't left my side since I ran back into the house.
I can see the woman in the street from the second floor. Still moving, even with her body riddled with bullets. Even with both her knees shattered, her spine shattered.
I aim the Ruger. A tiny bullet. A demonstration, perhaps, of precisely how little it takes to kill a human being. Inhale. Exhale. Easy shot. Squeeze.
Tiny red dot in her forehead. Her head drops. She stops moving.
Well, that's something.
Night two of the ongoing zombie apocalypse:
I sit in the darkness. Andrew sleeps, finally. He burned through three candles reading his "Star Wars" books before he finally went to sleep. Losing himself in the story. Smart kid.
Outside, the city is dark. Power went out at about eight, just as the sun was going down. Of course. Phones went shortly after, including cells. I have a CB radio walkie-talkie designed to draw power off a cigarette lighter. It also has police band. It's in my wife's car. Fat lot of good it does me now. A few of the radio stations are still playing. One of the DJ's is pretty obviously completely bugfuck. One is simply looping two hours of best hits of the eighties.
I check my watch. Fifteen minutes until "Synchronicity" plays again. I can listen to the radio through my earphones, no fear of noise escaping.
This happened all over the world, simultaneously. The news reports were really clear. Nothing natural could do that. Aliens? Clearing out the cockroaches for the next residents? "And you'll notice all these useful refined metals just lying around ready to be picked up." But if it's that, why not a disease that makes us all just drop dead? Why not a kinetic energy bombardment from orbit? Maybe too much damage to the planet.
Maybe it's the planet itself. Maybe some bacteria that was always there, in the living and the dead. Perhaps the planet entered some field that activated it, changed it. Some science experiment gone wrong. Maybe the Bilderberg Group decided there was too much of a surplus population.
I hear the baby crying first. Oh hell.
The neighborhood has started to stink from backed up sewers. Even with most of the houses empty. The house across the street, boarded up, didn't think anyone was there. The crying baby tells me someone is in there. Then a panicky voice yelling for the kid to shut up.
Then screams out in the streets.
They're coming.
I wake up Andrew, break out the guns. I have the pistols. Andrew has the carbine. I'm pretty good with a pistol and the .22's aren't going to slow down Screamers.
We douse the candles, look out on the street. There's an ornamental porch in front of the second story windows, big enough for the both of us on our bellies. We watch.
Two screamers, throwing themselves against the front door of the house across the street. Some voice, shrieking in mindless panic, yelling at them to go away. A baby crying.
More screamers, drawn by the noise. They're throwing themselves against the house, insane fury, leaving bloodstains on the plywood sheets over the windows. A human hurricane. I hear glass and wood crack.
"Dad, we have to do something." Andrew's whisper carries. "We can shoot them."
"Son, if we start shooting, they'll swarm us. They attack noise."
The baby won't stop crying. The voice shrieking for them to go away is hysterical and crying now. A woman's voice. More glass shatters, tinkling.
"Dad."
Why don't the screamers attack each other? Some pack instinct?
"Dad!"
I try to shut out the sound of the baby. It is screaming too. Primal fear that hits me in the gut, the ancient reflex. The young are in danger. The tribe is in danger. Protect the young, protect the women.
"Dad!"
He aims the carbine and starts shooting.
Oh well. Time to die. I aim both our pistols, my 9mm, my wife's .380, start blazing away like a character in a John Wu movie. In the moonlight, we still see screamers falling, thrashing. Others look at us, eyes gleaming with madness, scream at us.
Now it's our house they throw themselves at. The boards downstairs creak. Window glass shatters as the plywood flexes.
I jump inside the house, load fresh clips in the pistols, reload the empties. Andrew follows me. "Put in a fresh clip. You're empty."
He's crying. He nods, fumbles with a fresh clip for the carbine, finally rocks it in. "I'm sorry, Dad. I just, I heard that baby and-"
I can't help it. I hug him. "I love you son."
We go downstairs, barricade ourselves behind a couch, see the windows. It sounds like elephants are slamming themselves against the windows and door. A board has been torn off, dim light coming in. It won't be long now. Guns up. I hope Andy doesn't realize I'm saving the last bullet for him. We're catholic, suicide is forbidden. But I can spare him the final agony at least.
A car horn blares.
The front of the house is flooded with light.
A car engine roars, the horn still blaring, wheels screaming on pavement, the bash of a car hitting another car.
The screamers are suddenly gone. I look out the window as the roaring falls. The big Lincoln that the guy across the street owned is fishtailing down the street, chased by a mob of screamers, flashers and headlights on, horn blaring. Doesn't that idiot know that he'll be chased by every screamer in-
Oh.
The noise fades in the distance. I don't hear the baby crying anymore.
A couple of the bodies in the street are moving. Now they're shamblers.
I pick up my baseball bat and hand my guns to Andrew.
Day Three of the Ongoing Zombie Apocalypse.
The Screamers seem to have disappeared. I think the shamblers ate them. There are plenty of them now. The Screamers never attacked the Shamblers, but apparently the shamblers don't return the courtesy.
I've been trying to clean up the neighborhood. We shoot the Ruger once every half hour. Time for Andy's shot. "Take careful aim, son. Line up the front and rear sites. Make sure you're stable."
"Okay dad, I've got it." His voice is filled with frustration at how stupid adults can be.
Man, I SO wish i was twelve and knew everything again.
Our target is a dead cop. Arm missing. Very dead. Probably one of the first killed. There's a pistol at his belt, and spare magazines. A radio too. Bingo.
My son fires.
His target drops. I can't see the bullet wound on the forehead, but only the truly dead can be that still.
"Good shot son. Now stay up here on overwatch. If Screamers come, use the carbine. Okay? Stay out of sight. And if anything happens, just hide and stay quiet and wait for your mom to get here."
"I've got it dad. Jeez, I'm not a little kid, okay?"
He's adapting. Good.
Where the hell is Carla? I feel like half of me is out there somewhere, lost. These things can't have stopped her. Most women I've known would freak if you suggested keeping guns and an emergency food supply in the house. She suggested it to me.
Concentrate. Gear: Leather jacket, leather gloves. If these things spread their effect by bite, good solid leather should stop them. Can you get infected through splashed blood and scratches on the skin? Entrenching tool, safety goggles, scarf over face, my old army steel helmet.
Go to the bathroom. There's a second story porch there, above our back door. Three shamblers are milling around there. They arrived that morning, as I was cooking our breakfast on the hibachi we've put out there. I lie down on the porch, take the long handled shovel lying there, look down at those mindless faces. One lets out a moan, reaching up for me, it's arms several feet short.
I drive the shovel blade down into his forehead. Try not to see what it looks like afterward. Concentrate on killing the second, then the third.
Their crushed faces stay in my mind. I go down to the kitchen, open the door silently, slip out. Pistol in each hand, going to the front of the house. The street is empty. I run to the body of the dead cop, pull the pistol from the holster. It's a Smith and Wesson 10mm, automatic. A little too avant garde for my tastes, but high capacity. Before this happened, having a hundred rounds or so for each weapon seemed like plenty. Now a million bullets wouldn't be enough to make me feel safe.
A door slams behind me. I whirl- and see Jack Turing. Another neighbor. Heavy set, bearded. Lives with his girlfriend and some kids, two houses down. He's holding a baseball bat. "Hey Jack. Thought you'd bugged out. What happened to your hum-vee?"
"I missed some payments and the bastards repossessed it. Uh, are you going to take that gun?"
"Uh, yeah." I chuckle, go back to stripping the body.
"Ted, we don't have any guns. Perry never wanted any guns around the kids, so I got rid of mine and, well, Ted, we could really use some firepower."
Oh hell.
"I mean, you have those pistols and that rifle I saw, we got nothing!"
Dammit.
"You're right." I toss him the pistol and the two spare clips. "Here you go. You know how to use that?"
"'course! Thanks Ted."
I take the radio from the cops belt, check the cuff of his pants for his- bingo. His hideout gun. A snubnose .38. Behind me, I hear the slide on the 10mm ratchet, followed by the sound of a cartridge hitting the pavement. "It already had a round chambered, Jack. Better pick up that bullet, you'll need it."
"Ted, I need more than that. Take your pistols out of their holsters and set them on the ground."
I turn.
Jack is pointing his pistol at me, two handed grip. Very professional. "Sorry Ted, but we need those guns."
His face doesn't look sorry. Scared, yeah. Sorry, no.
"Jack, you don't want to do this."
He smiles. "Yes I do, Ted. I need the keys to your van too. It may be a piece of shit, but it'll get me the hell out of here. But first, your guns."
He points again with the guns, to emphasize his point.
Crack.
The Ruger doesn't even really sound like a gun when it fires. There's a tiny red dot in his forehead. A demonstration of the minimum amount of force required to kill a human being.
His body shakes as he falls. The spasms, fortunately, aren't enough to set off the 10mm.
I look to the balcony where my son is watching over me. I wave. He holds his rifle up.
I take the pistol off Jack. Then the magazines and the cop's gear. It's a bulky armful as I run to the van. The van is already loaded with our spare supplies, candles, kerosene. I throw it in the van and run into the house.
I'll leave a note for Carla. It's time to leave this place.

[m249saw]

moar?

[DTyra]

I'm really liking the clipped and abbreviated style of writing! Carla sounds a lot like my wife so I'm pulling for her.
Welcome to Zombie Squad.

[Griffworks]

Nicely done thus far! Welcome to the forum.

MOARPLZ?

[patriot2008]

Vary nice waiting for more. Just one thing its mag or magazine not clip, Dave sounds like a prepper or at lest a gun enthuses calling it a clip would be a rookie mistake IMO. And this is a fantastic start so don't stop

[T.J. McFadden]

Here's Chapter 2- a woman named Sara Davidson came up with the idea for this chapter and wrote much of it, so of course she has co-writer credit. Any mistakes are entirely my fault.

CARLA'S STORY
by
Sara Davidson and T.J. McFadden


“It’ll be hard for me to get home though. There’s a big pileup on the highway. I think some of those people might have done it. Is that what rabies is like?”

“No, and it shouldn’t be all over the world either. Not in a single night. Look, we’ll figure this out when you get home. I’m going to barricade the first floor and load up the guns. Come home as fast as you can.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you too. Now go.”

Ted's voice echoes in my head. I look around me. All of my work colleagues are frozen. They stare at the television, transfixed in horror as a news crew catches a scene at a the hospital downtown. A young man dressed in a hospital gown, the IV line still attached to his arm, busts through cordoned section by the ER and grabs the arm of the young female reporter and takes a chunk out of her porcelain white skin. Ruby red blood spills down her arm as the crazed young man dives for her neck. Everything pauses. A clarity of stillness permeates my vision. Reality in HDNet. More surreal than real. Suddenly sounds rush back and slap me across my face like a sonic boom. Time to move. Now.

I sling my purse and leave the office quickly. Stay away from the elevator Carla, use the stairs. Grabbing the fire axe and extinguisher from the fire fighting station near the stairwell, I take the stairs down and into the parking garage. Even here, close to their best means of escape, people are standing around, talking with each other. Not planning, talking. Is it even real to them yet?

The parking garage attached to my place of work is above ground. Exiting the building, the brisk wind stings my eyes. A quick glance back at where I’ve worked for ten years. Generic commercial office space, tastefully landscaped like a thousand other buildings. Goodbye CallCheck Services, LLC, I have a feeling I won’t becoming back to you anytime soon.

I look out across the business park to the interstate and airport beyond. Smoke is rising in great pillars from one of the airport terminals. The interstate is chaos. Honking horns, screams, even gunfire echo in the distance. Gunfire?

Then I hear it. A scream. A howl. Bestial, hungry, a sound that should never come from a human throat. What they were talking about on TV. The most horrifying sounds I've ever heard in my life. Even from this distance, I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. My whole body tingles into fight or flight mode. I think of Andrew. I hope Ted- I know that Ted has everything under control at home. But a mother’s instinct cries within me, to protect my child, to be with him and keep him safe.

I jump in my car and look at the city map on the GPS. Ok, the interstate is not an option. I need a back way to get home. I take a quick inventory of what supplies I have in my car. Mini-axe and fire extinguisher, check. First-aid kit, check. Bottle of water, check. Blanket,check. Police scanner, bonus. Ted left it in my car last time we drove to Akron. Thank you darling. I grab one of the reusable shopping bags I keep under the seat & fill it with the supplies. A girl can't be too careful.

I plug in the police scanner, get the car in gear and move. Muffled voices are yelling behind me as I see in the rear-view two co-workers numbly moving from the building entrance. I know I should stop, but my foot pounds the gas pedal. No turning back now. I pick a route that travels fairly parallel to the interstate. The police scanner is chirping non-stop.

“This is poppa yankee four zulu, I’ve got screaming inside the ambulance, somebody’s coming out- shit! Officer down, officer-“

“Central, all cars, do not approach screamers, I say again, do not approach, lethal force is authorized-

“Is this thing on? This is Wade Tillingham, anyone, your officers are dead, both of them are dead, I’m on I-77 near Green. Wait, one of your officers is alive, he’s getting up-“

No one is finishing their sentences today. Trying to pick something useful out of the panicked chatter, I almost smash into a car stopped on the road. Cars stopped on the road. It seems there is a wreck several cars ahead. Heads are craning out of car windows to try and get a view of the scene. A person gets out and starts to smoke a cigarette. I honk my horn out of frustration. Why can't these assholes just drive around? This is not the time to stop and stare. Why is that idiot just far enough on the berm to block me? Cars up ahead are honking, but then they stop suddenly. There's an eerie silence. Wait....

I crane my head out the window and hear it. I see it. People are running towards me. They don't even look at me or anyone else sitting in their cars, they just run. Tears stream down a woman's cheeks as she runs for no certain destination, just away from that sound. The sound of humans becoming animals and flocking in raving packs. The Black Friday from Hell, with deranged shoppers trampling each other to get to the best sale. But I know their fear.

The screamers, that's what the police scanner is calling them. They are just a few cars ahead of me. My husband's words reverberate in my head, "Now go." I grab my tote bag and run.

Suddenly, I'm part of the herd, humans acting like stampeding cattle running back from the direction I just came. People pushing and shoving to get ahead of one another. No longer are we individuals running away from an awful unknown. We have become a human tidal wave surging forward toward an unknown panic-induced goal. A man from behind knocks me down onto the pavement. A foot plants itself firmly in my back.

Ok, now I'm angry.

I roll to my side just as another body stumbles over me and jam my tote bag with the fire extinguisher straight up into the gut of another person. I hear him gasp and fall as I regain my footing. I scramble behind a freshly abandoned car as the sea of panic continues to surge around me. I will not let fear overrun my senses! I have to find another way out.

The screamers are so close now. I can feel their dead voices penetratingmy bones. I look around fast. There are trees to my right. I jump and run without looking back.

"HALT!"

The voice freezes me for a moment before I realize the command wasn't directed at me. A tall, rangy man, his hair swept back, steps out from the crowd. There's a huge pistol in his hand, a Magnum with a long barrel that he holds like it's an extension of his body. He squints as he takes aim. Another man joins him, not tall but bulging with muscles, the double barreled shotgun he is holding seeming toylike in his hands. A third man joins them, smaller than either, almost bouncing, his hands empty, but held like weapons in a martial arts stance. For a second, I almost feel like things will be okay. I look for something to use as a weapon to join them.

The screamers see them and howl, charging, going after the noise of the crowd. The tall man fires, almost lazily, the big magnum barely riding up in his grip as one screamer goes down. The others keep charging. Two fall when the muscle man empties both barrels of the shotgun into them. The others, bloody, don't even slow down. I turn and run for the woods. Behind me there is another shot from the magnum, them two more, quicker, almost panicked.

The screams from the three men are of pain, but not fear. Like the howls of cornered lions dying, lost among the hyena howls of the screamers. At the woodline, I look back.

I wish I hadn't. A screamer is brandishing the bloody stump of a hand, still holding the magnum. They are buried under the thrashing forms.

One screamer is looking at me, grinning, blood across his face, one eye torn out, oozing. He looks hungry.

The smallest man leaps out from the struggle, his face covered in blood, wraps a brawny arm around the neck of the screamer looking at me. He twists, snapping
it's neck before they are on him. We share one brief glance, his eyes wide in shock and anger as he shouts "Run!"

I run.


Day two:


The girl won't speak. She just rocks back & forth with a blank stare. I try to hold her but she flails like a wild animal. She'll let me pet her hair when she cries, but that's all. When the shamblers are close, she knows. Like she has a sixth sense about them.

"Good for us to have her," Paul jokes sarcastically. He thinks we should leave her. Little does he know that I'll drop him like a bad habit before I’ll leave the girl behind. Or if he tries anything shady.

After I fled the road, just beyond the trees I found a large creek and railroad tracks. They both ran parallel to each other & headed the direction I needed to go. South. I knew I had to get as much distance under my feet before night fall. The track provided decent cover because it was mostly shrouded in tree lines. Mostly. In the afternoon I had come to a clearing & saw more wreckage on the road. Bodies strewn about thankfully NOT moving or groaning. I didn't know why. I didn't want to take the time to find out.

When I ditched my car, I left the police scanner and forgot my cell phone on the charger. Stupid. There was no time! I still keep telling myself, no regrets or you won't survive. No regrets. No more mistakes.

From a hiding spot crouched down on the far side of the track, I peeked over the tracks to survey the area. I must've been there for an hour before I had the courage to move. The next tree lined area of the track was a good distance away. Maybe a hundred yards. All around I heard the screamers, but they didn't seem close to my location. I took a deep breath and pushed myself off the ground. Feeling exposed, feeling a million eyes on me, getting ready to pounce.

I ran. Rocks crunched under my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash. I dropped instantly, hard. Banged my chin against a railroad tie, simultaneously heard a ping against the rail it self. Something sliced my cheek. Involuntarily, I cried out. I looked up to see a man approaching. He was methodical with his movements, checking his handgun. Reloading. I stood up hands in the air.

"I'm not one of them! I'm not!"

He paused 30 feet in front of me, gun still drawn.

"What's your name?"

"Carla", I spoke clearly. I wasn't going to let this guy know I was terrified.

"We better clean your cheek up, you have a nasty gash ."

He holstered his gun slowly, but with precision. It's a big revolver, but not huge.

It looks familiar...Yes, Starsky, or Hutch, one of them carried one. A Python, a .357 magnum. I loved those cop shows when I was growing up. Brave men who protected people, who laughed and cared for their friends. Not drunken fathers who came home and beat their children.

This guy was comfortable with a sidearm. He was calm. He had to be former military or
possibly police. His eyes though, they weren't quite right........

"Sorry for shooting at you." A southern drawl lilted a gruff, smokey voice.

I looked him straight in the eye to see if he meant it. His eyes flickered for a moment. He quickly returned his attention to my wound.

"I would have done the same," I state matter-of-factly. "So, what's your story?"

His lips curled up in a weathered smirk, "Hmph, you're no bullshit. Straight shooter. I'm Paul. I, uh, don't think we have a lot of time for chit-chat, so we best get you fixed up and be figurin' out what our next move is."

"Our? I don't know..."

"Look here missy, safety in numbers. We got some kinda crazy phenomenon on our hands here. I'm looking for my people. Thing is, I bet you are too. And seein' as I don't really have a clue where I am, I thought maybe I'd ask you if you might show me where I need to go."

"What do you mean you don't know where you are?"

Paul was gruff, but knowledgeable. He bandaged me up with an expertise that one doesn't just have from working a desk job.

"I'm not from here." he muttered nonchalantly. "I was driving down from Berea. And I'm a guy, you know, directionally challenged? If TomTom isn't telling me where to go, I'm not going there."

So he's not military. Soldiers love showing off how they can read a map. Even when they can't.

"Yeah, but you're not from Berea. Not with that accent."

"No, my wife's from up that way, but her family lives down here in Canton. My wife and
I are moving down here too. She got a job downtown at the hospital 'bout a month ago
and she's been here while I've been settling up our affairs up north. We are due to
close on the house in the next couple of weeks. She called me yesterday told me I
needed to come down right away. Said somethings happened & I needed to be here.
So here I am. And something has happened, alright. Something bad. But to answer your question, I'm originally from Texas," and he gave me a big Texas smile.

"Ok, ok. Look, I'm going toward downtown. I can lead you where you need to go,
but we work together, right?"

He became serious again. "Look, lady, you're lookin' for your loved ones and I'm
lookin' for mine. It kinda looks like we need each other, I got the the protection and you know the way."

"About that," I looked down at the ground, then looked Paul straight in the eye.

"That rifle, in your rucksack, is that a .22?"

He smiled. "What do you know about guns?"
.....

Running, crawling, hiding. Paul and I agreed to not be heroes and avoid as many
screamers as possible. We were limited on ammunition so it was a no-brainer to save it for a rainy day. Still, when one those nasty fuckers tore screaming through the brush, Paul's magnum fired before I had the chance to turn around.

"That's right," he grumbled as he took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "You see that there missy? Right between the eyes. If you don't want to see that walking cesspool stand up again, you shoot him in the head. Blow his brains out. He'll stop after that."

"Where did you learn that?"

"Luck. When I was driving down from Berea this morning, when all this started, I was stalled up on the Interstate. Hundreds of people were. It was a mess of a situation, people runnin' this way and that. I saw a lone cop on the road making his last stand. He probably saved my life, by puttin' a bullet in the brain of one fixin' to take a chunk outta me. I hid in an empty trailer while it went after him. Couldn't do anything else. I wasn't armed. I had to hide 'til it went away. Had to."

"Is that where you got the guns? From the cop?"

"Well, one of 'em was mine. But the other," he grimaced," yeah, he wasn't needin' it anymore," his voice trailed off into silence. Seemed like he was done with that
conversation. His face suddenly lit up. "But that's them screamers for you. Easy to distract. If they're chasing you and something distracts them, you just hide and they forget all about you."

We came to the girl just before nightfall. By then we've seen the others, the real walking dead. We're working our way around a mob who have cornered some screamers. From our hiding spot we saw her wandering between cars on the road. She was probably 7 or 8 years old. Paul was not interested. "She's the bait'" he snarled.

"We get her and we might as well consider ourselves zombie food."

"You said yourself "safety in numbers"! We cannot leave this child to fend for herself."

"Yeah, when the person can take care of themselves then we let 'em join our
bandwagon, but no way is that little girl gonna help us get through this! She ain't even knowin' of what's going on, just walkin' in the open like that. Shit, for all we know, she's turned already. You wanna chance that, missy?"

Enough. I flicked my safety on, then off again. A sound to remind him as I point the rifle at him.

"First of all, my name is Carla," I hiss, spitting venom. "Second, we are dealing with a 'crazy phenomenon' where people are turning into walking dead. Walking Dead people who are eating other people! Now, that girl is NOT one of those creatures and we ARE going to save her!"

"Suit yourself," his voice was without a care in the world, his eyes however, never moved from my gun. "But you can go get her. I ain't doin' it."

Ted, why aren't you here? Even if it was just to make some know-it-all comment so
I could get mad at you and stop being afraid. Why am I stuck here with this stranger?

I keep my rifle aimed from my shoulder, like the soldiers I'd seen on the news. I dashed
from our hiding spot toward the girl. She looked dazed, in shock as she played and
skipped around the cars. "Hey, sweetie. Over here." I said in a hushed voice. Her eyes
turned and connected with mine. They grew as wide as saucer plates, but she did not
run.

"Hey, are you lost? Do you need help?"

She stares at me wide eyed, like a deer trapped in headlights. Then, she raised a tiny
hand up to her mouth with her index finger over her lips to tell me to be quiet. Eyes
locked with mine, they began to glisten with tears and she ran toward me. What the
hell? She grabbed my hand and pulled me back back towards the bushes where I left
Paul. She pulled with the tenacity of a linebacker, urging me back, back to the tree line. Then I heard it. The head of a screamer popped up from the wreckage of a
nearby car. It quickly worked it's body free of the twisted steel and plexiglass. With half of it's face torn clean from the bone, it grinned it's toothy bloody smile at us. It seriously licked what was left of it's lips! Carla, focus! Shoot the fucker!

My body obeyed. I barely felt the little .22 rifle recoil. It didn't affect my aim. The ghoul went down with one bullet between the eyes. I gathered up the shaken girl in my arms & quickly returned to Paul.

"Well, well. You can shoot a gun," Paul exclaimed with mixed enthusiasm. "I don't know about you there, Carla, but I've had about enough excitement today to last me a lifetime."

He never called me 'missy' again.

We settled down soon after dark in a drainage ditch. It was a silent agreement that Paul would take the first watch. My lids grew heavy fast & I fell into a fitfully restless sleep.

......

A shaking jolt, Paul shoving the gun in my hands & shouting orders at the girl. Bleary eyes widen to greyness. Pure thick grey soup that has somehow replaced the air. Moans coming from every direction. Dead hands poking through the thick morning fog and shuffling ever closer. But they’re slow. They're different. Before I even realize what's going on, I'm aiming the rifle and firing. One, two, three decayed vile creatures get popped in the head and drop in their tracks. A black ooze emits from the bullet wound of the one closest to me. The stench takes me aback.

Regaining focus, I see that Paul has taken some down & is holding the girl protectively behind his back.

"The girl knew they were comin'," he says in disbelief. "The girl knew! Come on Carla, we have to move now. This fog is too thick to be sittin' around waitin' for more of those zombies to show up."

The fog keeps its blanket on us for about an hour, a very tense, stressful hour. But the morning sun soon burns it all away, and I've never been happier for a beautiful clear day. It gives me hope as I walk with strangers to find our loved ones.

The girl was shaking and wild earlier, but as the fog has cleared she has become more calm. She let's me hold her hand as we walk, but she hasn't spoken yet.

As the sun grows higher in the sky she becomes a little girl again, skipping and
picking a flower growing from between a wooden rail tie. Paul grumbles to himself as the girl offers the tiny flower to him. The girl frowns & turns to me. Just as I accept the offering a shot rings out of the silence.

We scramble to the ground & I climb over the girl to protect her as we hear,
"Cease fire, cease fire!"

People!

A group of 3 adults... well, college students. Each armed with weapons and attitude. They came over quickly & helped us off the ground.

"Whoa, we totally thought you were zombies! Sorry! What's your names? Where
you going? "

Introductions were tense. I did all the talking, quick to not give these strangers all of our information. From Paul's stance, I can tell he has little interest in these kids either. 'They're too gun happy' I can already hear his voice in my head. 'They're more dangerous to us than any help.'

Tanner, the leader of this ragtag group, was playing hacky sack on campus two
days ago. Head full of dreads & a Phish T-shirt on, I struggle to figure out why he is in charge. April, the girl, is an apathetic waif with a gun. She is the one who probably shot at us. Then there's Mark, who has to be a freshman. He looks 12.

"So we're going to the airport," says Tanner. "We heard that the army is sending in planes to get out any survivors. You wanna come?"

Paul finally steps forward. " Where'd ya hear this, son? "

"There was talk yesterday. We were with some of the ROTC guys on campus. They said that's where we have to go. They didn't make it though. The whole campus was
swarmed right after we left. A "guns-free" zone, you know?" He holds up his shotgun.
"We only have these because some farmer crashed his truck. He was dead but he had
these guns inside. Anyway, we don't have any family here so, get us on the first bird
outta this place! Heh heh, right?"

I shake my head. "I came from over by the airport yesterday. It was on fire. It was all on fire. Besides, I'm not back-tracking, not after how far we've come. Tanner, everyone, we wish you the best of luck, but we cannot go with you."

"Ok lady, see ya on the flip. But you won't find much the way you're headin'.
You're almost to the north-side neighborhoods & they are FULL of screamers and shamblers. Those shamblers are nasty, man. They eat everything! Dogs, people,
rats, themselves," he chuckles. "You see them, you tell 'em Tanner says to go
eat a big donkey dick. Yeah, we're outta here."

And just like that, our first real human interaction since this whole mess started, ends in...well, nothing. So much for safety in numbers. God, Ted, I wish you were here.

We continue on, working our way around North Canton. Houses are closer together
now, more yards than farmland. We come to where we can see many businesses along
the road. A video store, a strip mall, a car dealership. Just past the car dealership the
creek took a sharp left east. So did our cover of trees. The tracks continued on a
southeast direction, but I didn't want to chance it without cover.

My feet are wet. I hate it when my feet are wet. But the flesh isn't being torn from my bones, so I guess I'm still on the positive side of the balance. Moving down along the creek seems to avoid almost all the zombies. Splashing in the water doesn't seem to get their attention. Maybe it's the nature of the sound. Paul has revealed a new side of his personality as we moved. He found a rusted, heavy length of steel pipe, about a yard long. When one zombie did stagger out of the brush and look at us, he leapt at it, swinging wildly. He crushed it's skull. Then he kept pounding and pounding, slamming
down long after it stopped moving. His face is twisted into a mask. Not anger, but almost inhuman desperation.

He's silent for several minutes afterwards. I'm grateful for the quiet. Terrified that face will return. It's familiar somehow, I've seen that face before.

We're deep into the burbs now, close to where we'll have to cross the highway. It's getting on to nightfall. Over towards the big department stores down route 62 there's a huge firefight going on. It sounds like a fireworks display, but no big booms. Lots of little pops. The sherriff's department was that way as well. Is someone making a stand? At
least it seems to have drawn away all the zombies, and the screamers.

Most of the houses we pass are empty, doors hanging open. Bloodstains and bodies are near many. At least a dozen have burned down, or are still burning. There's something disturbing about passing a burning house with no one around. No fire department, no police, no gawkers. Just a house that was someone's dream, someone's home, going up in flames.

When I get back to Ted and Andrew, we have to get out of our house. Houses in our neighborhood are close together, older houses. Once one begins to burn, the fire will jump from house to house. There'll be no stopping it. Where will
we go? So tired, can't think...

The highway. It's open. Gunfire still down the road. We have to cross. At least there's no fence here. Paul stops dead. "No way in hell are we gonna cross this! Any daggone thing for miles up and down that road can see us. Might as well wave a red flag."

"They're all going towards that gunfire. If we move quick and quiet, they won't even notice us."

"Bullshit! All it takes is one screamer seeing us!" My father is waving- No, Paul is waving his pistol angrily. That's it! That's who Paul's twisted expression reminds me of. My father, when my older brother dragged him from the bar before he drank his paycheck. Paul's eyes are wide, glaring.

I point to the girl. She is already skipping across the road, not a care in the world. "She's not afraid! She only gets that way when there are no zombies around."

It's the wrong thing to say. Paul swears like a longshoreman, lost in his anger. Mindless fury. "She is not some zombie whisperer, dammit!" His voice raises to a dangerously loud pitch. "She's a kid! A goddamn kid and she's gonna get us eaten! Just like my wife got-"

Paul stops, his eyes wide, his face suddenly blank in shock. He shakes his head, runs labored fingers through his mess of greying hair. He drops to his knees, silent sobs wracking his body.

Again, I see the familiar expression in this man that has haunted me for years. My father is on his knees sobbing in front of me after beating the crap out of me in a drunken rage. I'm in shock. I can't shake myself out of it. You aren't a girl anymore, Carla. You can't hide under the bed. Keep it together!

I try to keep my voice calming, but it quivers. "Paul, its ok. We aren't giving up. We are so close to my house," I urge firmly, regaining my voice. "We are going to follow the girl. Now. On the count of-"

He lowers the pistol, aims towards me and fires.

My heart almost stops beating.

I hear the bullet impact behind me, the wet sound of a skull exploding.

The dull "Uhrrrrrrr" of air expelled from a dead bodies lungs. Shuffling. Movement.

I'm running, not looking backwards, running across the highway. Don't look back Carla, you aren't some idiot teenager in a slasher flick, you don't have to know what was behind you. Paul keeps shooting, moving in a crouch, aiming as he shoots. A Screamer leaps at him from a nearby house, leaps on him. The magnum booms and the bloody corpse, now headless, goes flying. Ahead of me, I see a shuffling figure, drawn by our yelling, now by the gunshots. I stop a moment, squeeze off three shots from my .22. It goes down. I'm running again, faster, into the space between the houses, off the road.

Looking back to Paul. A dozen zombies are closing in. I see two corpses on the path I took, two shamblers that Paul killed as they were coming up behind me. Paul is standing there, calmly reloading as the walking corpses approach. I look for the girl. She's waiting, huddled against a wall, looking at me. I aim the .22. There are still six or seven rounds in the tube, I forget which. I wish this thing loaded from a magazine. "Paul, my turn! Get over here, I'll cover you!"

He looks at me, his face haunted. It's like his other expressions were a mask that has fallen off. This is his true face. He takes his pistol and shoots the nearest one. "You go," he yells. "Don't shoot, you'll just get 'em chasing y'all again!"

"Paul, run! I'll cover you! You have to come with me! We have to find your wife. She needs you!"

"I'm goin' to my wife, Carla. She needed me before and I wasn't fast enough." He holds up his right hand. The bite mark on it is dripping blood. Then he fires four more shots. Three shamblers drop. They've surrounded him now. I should shoot. I aim. But the girl is tugging at my blouse and Paul is putting the pistol to the side of his head. "Go find
that Ted fellah, darlin'. Go find your son. I'm done here. Don't let the little girl see."

I turn and grab the girl. We begin to run, quietly. I hear a single gunshot. I try
not to hear the growls and animal noises that follow. "Samantha." Her voice is a whisper as we run. "I'm Samantha."

I think of Ted. Of Andrew. Of how we always wanted more children. We always wanted a daughter.

It's night. A moonless dark night, as dark as it gets. I feel an overwhelming relief as we make our way through my neighborhood. Samantha holds my hand & leads me through the backyards as if she's lived there all her life. I don't understand her gift to draw us through infested areas & keep us safe, but I know not to question it.

We turn the corner to my street and I'm so happy I want to run. As I start, I feel dead weight pulling at my arm. Just looking down into Samantha's eyes, I know we are in trouble. My heart falls to the pit of my stomach as I hear a baby cry. Samantha pulls me down fast into bushes. Her eyes are wide and tears are starting to well over her bottom lids. Then we hear the screams. Just two at first, running from the darkness to my neighbors house.

The baby continues crying. Adult voices trying to quiet the child. But the screamers are coming, howling their fury and hunger. Like a siren they call their dead brothers and sisters to the feast. Samantha begins to shake. I hug her fiercely against me so she won't see them breaking their way through that house. Oh god there's so much blood.

Suddenly, gunshots rings out. Where from? Two figures on the second floor balcony at my house, strobe-lit with the flashes of their guns as they fire. Shooting as fast as they can pull the triggers. My house!

No, no, no! No Ted! You can't stop them with those, there's too many. You know that! Why are you endangering our child? You don't have the kind of guns you need to stop these things! You'd need machine guns to stop them all. Andrew must be shooting too, there's multiple fire.

I stare with pure horror as the screamers' heads turn in unison. They bolt from my neighbors house and run directly to mine.

I want to run to them but that would be suicide. If the screamers didn't get us, Ted and Andrew might shoot us by accident. Oh my god, I can't just sit here.

As quick as it began, the gunfire ceases. They are out of ammo! Damn you Ted, this is not the time to play hero! The gunfire aroused so many screamers. Now a swarm of them throw their fevered bodies against my house. They are attacking my family.
They'll attack with maniacal fury, beating down the doors, furious to attack the newest noise and light, their previous prey forgotten.

They chase after noise and light.

I grab Samantha and pull her to the next driveway. Our neighbor Bob's old Lincoln Continental is still parked there. I almost smash the window, but the noise would draw the screamers. Too soon. I check the doors. It's unlocked. I throw Samantha into the passenger seat and use the butt of the rifle to bust the steering column. It cracks. The wires hang in front of me.



Suddenly time stands still and I'm thirteen again. My father taught me how to hot-wire cars among many other non law-abiding things. Called it our "father-daughter time". Little did he know, or care probably, that I would use that knowledge to break into cars and go joy riding during my teens. I swore I would never do this again. Funny how things come back to bite you in the ass.

Thank you daddy. You were a lousy father, but you taught me to shoot and steal cars.

So now I can save my husband and child. The car vrooms to life at the spark of the exposed wires. I throw it in gear. "Hold on Sam, put your seatbelt on. This is going to be bumpy".

I push her head down to her knees, protect her as best I can as I gun it directly in front of my house and lay on the horn. The big V8 roars. Flashing the brights on those dead bastards. So close to my loves, my life. Soon to be so far away.

"Get off my lawn!"

They all give their complete attention to me. I throw the car in reverse. Keeping my hand on the horn the whole time I draw them out just enough from my house, turning in reverse, fishtailing across the tiny lawn. As they leap at me, I throw it in drive and run over as many of those motherfuckers as I can. Slamming impacts. Flying bodies and the crunching of bones. It's not enough. As we drive over the corpses I hear their screams all around us. Primal. Inhuman. Hungry.

We are so close. My home. My child. But I have to keep going. I have to lure them out of the neighborhood. Away from Ted and Andrew. Tears stream down my face as I drive wildly, drawing the screamers away. Tires scream as I skid on blood, metal
slamming as we sideswipe parked cars. In the rearview mirror, they are a wave of darkness in the night, more screamers than I thought possible. I force myself to slow, to stay close enough to hold their attention. To keep them chasing me. Away from my husband and my son. Into the dark and the dead, away from those I love.

No regrets.

[patriot2008]

Thanks for the new post... just one thing, just who is Ted or am I missing something ?

[DTyra]

Thanks for the new post... just one thing, just who is Ted or am I missing something ?

Ted is Cora's husband who was in the house as she led the zombies away from him and her son. Now he's gone with their son, not realizing his wife Cora who he was waiting for, was the person who saved him and his their son. No worries, sometimes I get the different stories I'm reading confused also.

Oh! Thanks for the update! I like it!

[patriot2008]

Thanks for the new post... just one thing, just who is Ted or am I missing something ?

Ted is Cora's husband who was in the house as she led the zombies away from him and her son. Now he's gone with their son, not realizing his wife Cora who he was waiting for, was the person who saved him and his their son. No worries, sometimes I get the different stories I'm reading confused also.

Oh! Thanks for the update! I like it!

No when his boss called he asked if this is "Dave Simmons".

[T.J. McFadden]

Ted and Dave are the same guy- initially it was a mistake I made in the story, but later on it gets explained. The first four stories in the series cover overlapping time periods at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, but are told from differing viewpoints. Coming up next is from the POV of their 12 year old son: Apocalypse and Andy.

[DTyra]

I guess I'm not on top of things as much as I thought...nothing new there.

[T.J. McFadden]

Here is Chapter 3: Apocalypse and Andy. It kind of started out as "Red Badge of Courage" meets "Zombie Apocalypse" but along the way...well, you'll see.

Apocalypse and Andy
by
T.J. McFadden

"Dad! Dad. I..."
"Andrew, we're leaving. Get in the van."
"But what about mom?"
"We'll see her again. I left a note. She'll know we're over at your Grandmother's house. Now grab your bag and get in the van."
"But, Dad, I..."
"You did what you had to do son," he gives me a hug. "Thank you for that. But we have to move. Now."
No duh! I was deadly! Boba Fett on Coruscant couldn't have pulled off the shot I did. And with my dinky little .22. What would it have looked like if I shot that guy in the head with the carbine? That would have been awesome! Go ahead Dad, you've gone back into "War Machine" mode, but even you know I did good back there.
I look back once at the first man I've ever killed.
An old lady has run out into the street and is crouched over the body. Bending over it- a zombie? Is she gonna eat him?
No. She's lifting him. Holding him to her chest.
She's crying.
It's Perry, the lady who lives with Mr Turing. No, not lives. Lived. What will she do now? I don't like her much. She yelled at me when I cut across her lawn on my bike.
She's crying.
"Dad, we can't leave them behind." I follow Dad back into the house. Suddenly I want to run, to hide. To crawl away somewhere.
Dad doesn't even look at me as he talks. He checks the radio, turns some dials and listens to it. It doesn't make any noise. He puts it in his knapsack. Now he's grabbing a few last packages. "We can't take them with us."
"They?"
"His girlfriend. His kids. They might want revenge. We can't trust them. Now grab your bag and get in the van."
"But dad-"
"Get in the damned van!"
He yells at me. That bellow he has when he's really angry. It's like a wall of noise.
I grab my bag, the one he had me make up two days ago with my clothes and stuff. As we jump into the van to go who knows where, I pull out my journal. In bumpy
handwriting, I scrawl 'I shot a man today'.
It's hard to stay steady as dad weaves the van around wreckage and debris. The tires are screaming. I have to blink away tears. Why am I crying? I'm not hurt. I'm not the one lying in the street. I stare at the letters. They stare back at me. Accusing.
I scratch out 'shot' and write in 'killed'.
###
JOURNAL-
It's been three days since this started. Three days since I came downstairs, wondering why Dad was calling for me. Wondering why his voice sounded funny. When I got down to the living room, I started wondering why he was watching a horror movie. He likes war movies, all the stuff on the military channel or the science channel. He hates horror movies. The special effects on this one are totally awesome but I don't recognize it. I try to figure out how I never heard of this movie before.
It took me a couple of minutes to realize it wasn’t a movie. Dad went all quiet after he told me I wasn't going to school. We watched the news together for what seemed like forever. I never watched the news.
I've never seen him scared before. I noticed it, even when he started barking out orders, sending me down to the basement to get nails, hammers, plywood. Even while he started loading up the guns. He loaded up every magazine of every gun, then had them all lying on the sofa, except the pistol in his holster. That was kind of cool.
He had me bringing out more nails as he nailed boards over the outside of the windows. That was when he shot the first screamer. He didn't act like the guys in the movies. He looked scared when he shot the screamer. Scared when he reloaded. Scared when the bodies got back up again.
I don't like him looking scared.
That was when he went into War Machine mode. No goofy jokes, no long boring stories. Always watching. Quiet. You can tell he's thinking. Each time he looks at me, I can tell he's thinking. I feel like he's checking me out. Seeing if I measure up. If he talks, it's a command or a lesson. All "remember this..." or "Get me that.."
Where's Mom? She should be home by now. Dad said she was coming back from work. I wish she was here now, even if it was to yell at Dad for pounding all those nails into the house and the mess he was making.
She should be home by now.
Once all the windows on the first floor were boarded up, we loaded the van with stuff. Canned food from that big pile Mom and Dad keep in the basement. Candles, camping gear, all sorts of wierd stuff Mom and Dad keep. The first lesson in War Machine mode. "If you want a snack, get it out of the refrigerator or the freezer. Do not eat any of the canned stuff."
DAY ONE
"Why?"
"We'll probably lose power in the next couple of days. When that goes, all the refrigerated food will start to go bad. We want to eat it before that happens. Save the canned food for when the power is gone."
"Like, I can eat all the ice cream I want?"
That breaks his War Machine mode for a second. He smiles. It’s stupid how good that makes me feel. "All the ice cream you can eat, son. Just like with tonsils."
I fix myself a big bowl of ice cream as he locks up the house. We’re going over to Grandmas' house to drop this stuff off. Somehow, I just really need ice cream. It's like my head is stuffed with cotton and i can only think of one thing at a time. It’s kind of hot. I just concentrate on the ice cream, even when we are driving over. The streets seem funny. Like, I don't know, like people are driving bad. Dad yells a couple of times. He has the guns beside him. He gave me the .22 because I've fired it. Nothing happens.
We drop off the stuff at Grandmas'. Grandma is really quiet but she hugs me really tight when we get there. Before we leave, Uncle Dale and Aunt Carol show up with their kids. Uncle Dale is in that old civil war uniform he wears to reenactments. He has four or five of those old time muskets and pistols. He and Aunt Carol are both carrying them. So is Cassandra, their oldest. She's only a couple years older than me. Plus Uncle Dale has a shotgun, a modern one, not like the old muskets. Carol thinks I should stay with them. I can tell Dad is thinking about it. I think about Dad being out there all alone, like he was in the street when that guy ran at him. But what if one got behind him? Who'd see it?
“Dad, I’m coming with you. Someone needs to watch your back. I can do it. Uncle Dale is nice, but he thinks I’m a kid. I'm not a kid anymore. I can shoot those things.”
Dad looks at me and shakes his head. I can tell he's not happy. But when he speaks, his voice is funny. "I saw kids younger then him in Iraq. Kids with AK47's. I don't like it, but he can fight. We need him to fight."
Whoa. It would be so cool to have an AK47.
We're driving back. I'm in the back of the van. I notice the streets are a lot emptier now. I see one guy running when two people jump on him. One is a kid.
I look away.
Dad yells. A second later we hit something, something big. The whole van rocks. I hear glass breaking.
A bloody face is shoving in through the broken window! Teeth so sharp! Screaming, my ears hurt, hands reaching for me, blood so much blood! Daddy! Bloody hands grabbing me, pulling me towards those teeth! TEETH! DADDY!
THUNDER.
I'm deaf! Oh crap I'm deaf! Flash in front of my eyes, deaf and blind, being thrown around. Dad's driving like he's crazy.
Has he gone crazy?
It's like there's an afterimage in my head of Dad shoving his pistol into the eye of that guy who came through the window. Flash. Thunder.
Wet.
I'm wet.
Red blood. On my hands, my pants.
I stink. I think I peed myself. I can't tell dad that. I'll have to change so dad doesn't know I peed myself.

###
JOURNAL- Why didn't I shoot that guy? I was so scared. I forgot all about my gun. It’s like I’m looking at myself. Grading myself. Great Andrew, just great. You screamed like a baby and yelled for Daddy. Then you wet yourself.
My head feels hot now. Do I have a fever? Sometimes when I think about how stupid I was, I wish I was dead. But I don't want to die. Not if that is what dying is like now.
FIRST NIGHT
Dark. So dark. Dad has nailed blankets over the windows in his office, up here in the attic. He says we can't let any light out. He's working on his computer. Checking out stuff on the internet. More zombie stuff.
My skin hurts. I showered for an hour after we got back, scrubbing all the blood off me. I saw myself in the mirror before I went into the shower. My face was spattered with blood, like the time Danny Coogan and I were supposed to be painting and got into a paint fight. Blood soaked through my clothes too. Like it did with Danny Coogan.
He isn't answering his email or texts. None of my friends are.
So dark.
There's a thump. A bloody body sliding in through the window. Dad didn't notice. It's the guy he shot today. Half his head is still missing. He looks like Megatron from the third transformers movie, after his skull was blown away. Things are crawling in his skull.
I can't move. I can't speak. My legs won't move. The zombie smiles with half his face. The half he still has. He leaps at Dad. He tears his head off. There's a bloody stump where my dad's neck was. I can scream finally, I jump, I have to grab the head, put it on, screaming, thrashing the zombie is on me crushing me. Covering my mouth...
It's dad.
Dad's alive. His head is back on.
He's got his hand over my mouth.
He speaks quietly. "Shhhhhh. It's okay sport. I'm here. It was just a nightmare. We're okay. It's all okay.."
There's no zombie. There's no zombie. Dad is okay.
"Say your prayers to Jesus son. Keep the nightmares away."
Dad dozes off himself later. I go onto the internet then, looking for any of my friends. It's dawn before I can sleep again.
SECOND NIGHT
The screams wake me up.
They sound like they're right outside the house. Dad takes the pistols. He hands me the carbine. Finally!
It feels so solid. So heavy. This is a real gun, not like the little .22. I feel better just gripping it. Even the screamers outside don't seem as scary.
We crawl out on the balcony. A bunch of screamers are throwing themselves against the house across the street. Bloodlust, just like in the video games. But the guys in the video games don't have a carbine. Then I hear a baby crying. I whisper, like Dad's been telling me to. "Dad! We have to do something. We can shoot them!"
"Son, if we start shooting, they'll swarm us. They attack noise."
That baby is still crying. Why won't Dad do something? He's got the pistols. We can shoot so many bullets! "Dad!"
He's silent.
He's testing me. What will I do? He's been in War Machine mode all day, ever since he started sniping those shamblers in the street. He's testing me, like a Jedi testing a Padawan.
"Dad!"
Nothing. The baby is crying. Is he testing my courage? Or my compassion? I have to decide. I have to. Our lives? The baby?
I aim and pull the trigger as fast as I can.
He starts shooting too, both his pistols, the world dissolves in muzzle flashes. My ears are ringing from the guns firing so loud. I keep firing into them.
I'm jerking at the trigger but my gun won't fire!
"Get inside!" He's ducking inside the house, scrambling.
The Screamers look at me, their eyes shining in the moonlight. They all see me! Why aren't they dead? I know I killed some of them!
They scream.
I scramble inside as I see them rush the house. I've killed us. We're going to die. Dad wasn't testing us, he was trying to keep us alive, we're going to die, I killed us-
Dad yanks me through the window.
He's reloading his pistols, reloading his magazines. He barks at me. "Put in a fresh clip. You're empty!"
He's so angry. Because I've killed us. I was stupid. I was stupid pulling on the trigger of an empty rifle. I eject the old magazine, slowly remembering what he's been trying to teach me for the last two days. Real smart Andrew. He's only had you do it a hundred times already. Then you forget.
I'm choking as i speak. It's hard to see. I wipe my eyes. "I'm sorry Dad. I just, I heard that baby and.."
Choking. I won't cry. I won't cry. I was stupid. I won't cry.
He hugs me. Crushes me to him. His voice sounds funny. He doesn’t sound mad. He sounds like he’s about to cry too. "I love you, Son."
For just a second, it's all okay.
We go downstairs to die. I won't forget to reload. The door is shaking. They have to come through the door.
Dad's looking at me funny. Wondering if I'll freeze up again. I won't. I aim, the second magazine in my hand.. Ready. Shoot them in the head. We can't run. They'll just chase us down.
Screaming. Howling. They sound so hungry. I'm shaking. I don't want to die.
The door slams open an inch. Bloody fingers shove through the gap. They're shoving back the barricade.
Where's that light coming from? Someone's honking a horn. Are they crazy?
It sounds like a demolition derby out there!
The fingers are gone. The howling is different now, farther away. Nothing is slamming against the door. Tires screaming like in a movie, out in the streets, more screaming, from farther away, someone is honking their horn so loud.
The noise fades.
Dad motions me to stay in place. He goes forward slowly. Looks through the cracks in broken windows. He waves me forward and whispers. "Cover me."
I can see the street from the door now, as dad goes out. He's holding my baseball bat. There are bodies all over the street. Screamers that we shot. We did kill some of them. They'll come back as shamblers if we let them. Dad stands over one, raises the bat.
The second time he hits, it's a wet sound.
Then he goes to the next.
I look away. I remember to keep watching with my rifle. Anything to keep from looking at what he's doing.
One of the bodies is moving. "Dad!" I remember to whisper. Then I point. He nods. He even smiles. He stands over the body. It's a kid, my age. Starting to move. Starting to moan.
The bat glistens in the moonlight as he slams it down on the kid's skull.
A wet sound.
I hope he leaves that bat outside.
###
JOURNAL-The end of the world sucks.
I wish I had school tomorrow. I wish the dumbest, most boring TV show ever was on TV right now and I had to go to a boring day at school and eat whatever the cafeteria served and sit in my classroom. I wish Dad would tell me to take out the trash and clean my room.
I couldn’t stop asking myself what happened to that baby?
Dad finished busting heads out in the street and came back inside and washed himself off. He's got a pile of bloody clothes in the basement now in a trash bag. He smelled like bleach. He re-stacked the barricade and then barricaded the stairs and we went to sleep on the second floor of the house.
He went to sleep. I couldn't.
I wanted to. I was so bored. But the nightmares…
Where is Mom? She should be home by now! Unless she's...
Where is she?
I wish she'd show up right now and yell at me for leaving dirty dishes on the floor of the living room or something.
Dad wouldn't go and check on the house where that baby was crying. He looked at it for the longest time. He looked at it like it scared him. It was so quiet. Then he came back. "They must have been in that car. We bought them time to escape. Don't worry about it."
That's what he said. I knew he really believed it. He doesn't trust me. Not after I almost got us killed.
I had to find out.
I knew what I had to do.
I took the carbine and slipped out of the house. I went out the back door and crossed the street. It was getting light in the east. Dad calls it “false dawn”. I knew I had to hurry.
It stinks more every day. Toilets overflowing. Rotting bodies. Woodsmoke was coming from somewhere. I moved quietly. I was like a ninja. Watching. Listening. Dad says that at night, you see with your ears. I didn’t hear anything.
I went around the houses, between the two houses on the driveway. I was really silent. I kept thinking that this is where the monsters always jump the guys in the movies.
The door at the back of the house was hanging open. Something was shining on the ground.
I saw Bones. Stripped white. Something wet, fleshy.
I almost died when I saw a bloody head staring at me, mouth snapping. It was a woman. The screamers had torn up everything below her things.
Torn up everything below her breasts. They were still there. Below them were bone and flesh and blood. She stared at me. She tried to bite me. Her breasts were covered with blood.
I almost missed it. It was pink and moving. A baby.
One of it’s arms were missing.
It was still moving.
I so wanted to scream. To run away. To bash my head until I couldn’t remember seeing those things. I still want to. I’m afraid to sleep now because I’ll see them in my dreams.
I didn’t scream. I was shaking so bad. I could see it in my head. They tried to run out the back. Screamers were waiting for them. They tore them apart. All except the baby. They must have run off after that car.
The baby was trying to crawl towards me. The mouth was open.
I slammed my rifle butt down on it's skull. It stopped moving.
That was when I threw up.
If one had come up then, I'd have died. I was ralphing up everything, two days worth of food I think. I felt like I was turning inside out.
I still have a bitter acid taste in my throat. The last of the throwup. I rinsed my mouth but it’s still there. I wish I could rinse my head. Rinse the memory away.
The baby stopped moving. But I wasn’t done. I went to the dead mom. She was looking at me. Her breasts were swaying as she tried to bite me. I couldn’t stop looking at them. Then I heard her teeth click as she tried to bite me.
I slammed the rifle butt down on her face. Again and again. Till she stopped moving.
I snuck back into the house and barricaded the back door again. Then I washed off the rifle butt with bleach. I rinsed my mouth, then my hands. I scrubbed them till they were raw.
Dad was still asleep when I got back into the room. He's sleeping on the floor. I’m on the bed. He woke up when I got into bed. I’m hiding under the covers when he asks "Hey sport, you want breakfast?"
I kept seeing crushed skulls. Seeing the eyes looking off in different directions. Will I look that way when I’m dead? The thought of food almost makes me sick again. I told him I wasn’t hungry.
DAY THREE
I put down my notebook and steady myself.
Dad stacked all the food and stuff in boxes in the back of the fan, on the sides and in the back. I'm on a box in the center. It's like a fort. I'm looking back. Dad says I'm the tail gunner, that I have to shoot anything that comes at us from the sides or back. I've got both the rifles. He made me wear one of his old army camo shirts with the big pockets. All the loaded magazines for the carbine are in the left bottom pocket. When they're empty, I'm supposed to put them in the right bottom pocket. He's in the front. He has all the pistols so he can fire one handed.
I brace myself as we move. I have the rifle ready to shoot. Most of the side windows are already broken out. We taped plastic over them to keep rain out but Dad said I should shoot right through them. Through the back window too if I have to.
Dad is cursing a lot. We slow down. I smell wood smoke. It's like a campfire.
I turn to look.
Houses are burning. Lots of houses. They're so close together, old houses made out of old wood. No fire department. "Dad, did the zombies set them on fire?"
"No." He's annoyed. Not really mad. "Some damned idiot had a cookfire inside their house and set the place on fire. They built these houses so close together, the fire will jump from house to house. These old houses will burn like matchwood. We'll have to go around. Okay, look back son. Watch your areas."
I turn to look. "What a bunch of damned idiots."
"Son, I don't like you to...Never mind."
He doesn't want me to say damned idiots? He said it. Why can't I? It's so unfair.
We jerk to a stop going down a street. "Oh shit."
I'll bet he'd get mad if I said that too.
We're stuck in an alley. We start to back up.
I see three shamblers come out from behind a dumpster.
"Dad! Shamblers, at, uh, six o'clock!"
I remembered! I remembered what he told me. I aim, even as we roll backwards. "Shoot 'em son! Shoot now!"
I aim. I shoot. The first one goes down. Then the second one. That takes two bullets. We hit the third one! Yeah! He goes flying, just like in the movies! The van jumps and bounces as we roll over another! I keep shooting, more of them are coming at us. My shots are going wild as the van whips around. It sounds like the tires are slipping on something. I hear tires scream, like in the movies.
WHAM!
Why aren't we moving? I keep shooting. My magazine is empty. The engine is making a funny sound. The van is shaking. I shove the empty magazine in the right pocket. Reload and keep shooting. We're in the middle of the street. Zombies are coming out of everywhere. Dad's saying terrible words now, cursing like the guys in the movies he doesn't know I watch. We rock one last time, then he yells and shuts off the engine. He's shooting now but they're coming in from all sides. I keep shooting. I hear him blast out the windshield.
It suddenly reminds me of the last parts of the video games where they just come in from everywhere and there are too many to shoot.
I load a third magazine. They're almost close enough to touch the van. I unstrap and crouch behind my walls of canned beans and beef stew and jars of peanut butter and I keep shooting. One bullet to each now.
Someone else is shooting. They’re shooting fast. Not like a machine gun but close. A different kind of rifle sound too. More zombies are falling.
A ladies' voice. "Get out of the van! Come this way. I'll cover you!"
"Get out Andrew. You heard the lady!"
"But dad, our food, our stuff-"
I find out a second reason why he made me wear his old army shirt. He grabs me by the collar. The heavy cloth holds me. It doesn’t tear. Dad yanks me out of my seat and throws me out across the hood like I'm a toy. Holds me by my neck so I drop feet first, then smacks the back of my head. "Run!"
I run. I can hear him behind me, glass crunching under my feet. I see the lady.
She's standing in the middle of the street. She's old. Not old like grandma, but old like mom and dad old. She's dressed funny too, like she was going to church or something. Fancy clothes. Except for the rifle. It's an M16. I recognize it from Dad's army shows. She's holding it up on her shoulder, firing.
Dad and I stand beside her. We're a little circle now, all firing outwards. It sounds like a war movie. In a few minutes, we've shot every zombie in sight. We have the streets to ourselves.
She's reloading her rifle. She smiles at me. She has a nice smile, but there's something wrong with it. There's something wrong with all of us right now though, so it doesn't bother me. "Hello young man. You and your father can go to my shop over there."
She points to a little shop building. A sandwich shop. "The door is unlocked. There's food and supplies inside."
"Let's go, son." Dad slaps me on the shoulder. My neck is sore. We get to the door of the sandwich shop. I'm about to jump out of my skin. Dad stops me and looks back. The lady is still standing in the street. "Ma'am! You don't need to stay out there to cover us. I'll cover you now."
"Just go on in. There's fuel in the generator for a week. I have....something to do."
Why is she just standing there? She looks like she's waiting for the zombies to come.
"Ma'am! The door's locked!" Dad rattles the door. Funny, I thought he opened it for a second. "I need you to unlock it!"
"I unlocked it. Go on in!"
"Sorry Ma'am, it must have re-latched! Do you have a key?"
I don't know why I whisper when I say "Dad, just kick the door in!"
"Shhh!"
She slings her rifle like a soldier and walks towards us, digging around in her purse. It's fancy, with pearls and stuff. Dad steps aside. She tries to unlock the door and it just opens as she grabs the knob. She frowns at dad.
He shrugs. He's such a doof sometimes. "Sorry Ma'am, it much have been stuck. We better get inside. If some screamers come, they'll see us in here and that's all she wrote."
Just then I hear a howl, like the screamers make. It can't be more than a block away.
She looks at Dad like the screamer is his fault. Then we all go inside the shop and lock the door.
It's nice. Not like a McDonalds, but nice with lots of old time stuff and little tables. Mom would love this place. Girly stuff like teapots and lacey napkins all over the place.
The biggest table has a body on it, covered by tablecloths.
Dad sees it and has both pistols aimed at it as soon as he sees it. The woman speaks. "Please stop pointing your guns at my husband. I already had to...had to..."
She looks like she's about to cry. Dad puts away his pistols, blushing. "I'm sorry. It's just been, you know, crazy. I'm sorry about your husband."
"We thought we were pretty well set up for this." She touches where the face is. Specks of blood are leaking through the tablecloth. "We had the emergency generator. My guns, the food, everything. Even each other. But we heard a noise last night and Truman had to go investigate. He had his pistol. But he forgot to take it off safe. A typical stupid boot mistake. One of them had broken in. By the time we killed the thing, it had bitten him twice. He fought the infection for hours. He was always so stubborn. When he turned this morning, I killed him."
I give her a hug. She's tall, almost as tall as dad. She wears a lot of perfume. She hugs me back. "Thank you sweety."
"I'm Andrew. Andrew Simmons."
She steps back and shakes my hand. "Pleased to meet you Andrew. I'm Jacqueline Bell."
It's weird. It's like we're all pretending this is some formal meeting or something. Dad shakes her hand and introduces himself. "You saved our lives. Thank you. That was some nice shooting out there."
She smiles. Her voice sounds a little different. "It's been a while. I'm glad I haven't lost it. I was Airborne Rangers for eight years. I did combat drops into Grenada and Panama."
"Wow. I didn't know they let women in the Rangers back then."
She laughs at that. I wonder what's so funny. But she looks sad suddenly. "I left to marry Truman. He was the only man I ever knew who accepted who I was. And now he's gone."
She smiles, but it's a sad smile. Then she gets all brisk and professional, like a teacher on the first day of school. She starts shoving bullets into the magazines she emptied helping us. "I'm going to go out and put a few marks in the scoreboard in his name. See how many of those things I can get. You're welcome to stay here as long as you like. There's plenty of food. We fixed the broken window where that shambler came through. There won't be any more."
"Wait!" Dad's voice suddenly sounds calm. Too calm. Calm voices sound wrong now. "Ma'am, we're grateful for the help. But I need to get my son to his grandmother's house. It's forted up and hopefully his mother is there by now. My van has a broken axle, we have to cross half the city and I would really appreciate your help getting my son to his grandmothers. I can't make you help us. We have no claim on you. But we could really use your help."
She looks at me. There's an odd expression on her face. She's quiet for a couple of minutes. When she talks, her voice is very quiet. "We always hoped we'd be able to adopt, but there were always so many forms and so many people we had to talk to...How old are you, Andrew?"
"I'll be 13 in march."
She sighs. "I'll help you. But when we get him to his grandmother's, I'm done."
"Deal. You wouldn't happen to know where we could boost some transport, would you? It's a long walk."
"Truman worked at a pharmacy about two blocks away. He had the keys and they had a delivery van."
JOURNAL
Getting to the pharmacy seemed to take forever. We couldn't start until Jacqueline had picked out new shoes. She said we might have to run and have you ever tried to run in heels? Whatever that meant. But she'd been wearing high heels when we first met her and she was shooting zombies. Girls are strange.
We shot a few zombies getting over there but not many. The pharmacy wasn't a drug store. I'd thought about drug stores I knew with comics and game cards in them. I figured if we could take their van, I could get some serious "World of Warfare" cards. You know, it wouldn't be like stealing if this is the end of the world. This drug store, though, had small windows and no comics or magazines. No candy section either.
Dad went to check out the van. Jacqueline said we should stock up on medicine and she began going through the bins in the pharmacy. She seemed to know them really well. I guess because her husband had worked there. She was checking a book when Dad came back. She'd given me a couple of cloth grocery bags, the type they say are green, full of bottles of pills. I could tell right away he wasn't happy.
"An addict?” He said it that way, quietly. Like he didn’t believe. Then he asked Jacqueline why she was grabbing those drugs. He spoke real quiet at first.
She kept sorting. She said she we would need antibiotics. That the zombie plague wasn’t the only problem we’d face. Dad didn’t believe her at first.
DAY THREE-AFTERNOON
"The antibiotics are in these bins over here. What are you going through those bins for?"
"It's personal."
Dad stepped forward and grabbed her wrists. I look away. Where was a zombie attack when you really needed one?
"Jackie, are you on drugs? I've seen what they do to people in the field. You don't need this" He looks at one of the bottles. "Premarin? Estradiol? Estrogen? What the hell?"
Dad sends me to check out the van and put the bags of pills in it. He says to wait for them. I ran to the van. It’s just too much. I know there’s going to be a big fight. Except both of them are real quiet when they finally come in. Dad's face looks really funny, like he was bonked between the eyes with a rubber mallet or something. Jacqueline is almost smiling. She looks kind of relieved. Both of them are carrying bags with big bottles of pills in them.
Jacqueline yells "I call Shotgun" even though she’s holding a rifle.
Dad has me open the back door of the van and cover him while he opens the garage door to let the van out. Then he jumps in the van. Just as a screamer comes around the corner.
I shoot it three times with the carbine. It goes down. I jump in the van. Dad guns the engine. I feel the bumps as we drive over it.
I can't see much in the back of the van. There’s a bunch of medical stuff there too, but no seats. I have to brace myself as dad drives. I still bang my head when dad stops suddenly. He and Jacqueline jump out as he calls "Hop out Andrew! Be ready to shoot!"
I was just getting used to the darkness in the van. The daylight is blinding. It takes me a minute to see we are parked by our broken minivan. Dad threw open both the side doors and started chucking the boxes of supplies out of our van and into this van. "Want me to help, Dad?"
"Cover your flank, Andrew." Jaqueline spoke. "Don't look back. Think of us as in the middle of a circle. You watch your half of the circle, I'll watch mine and your dad can concentrate on getting those supplies."
GreatI. Now she was going into War Machine mode too. Still, it made sense. I scanned with my rifle, like some kind of security bot from Star Wars, even imagining myself as a robot- until I saw a shambler come around the corner and look at me. It was a boy, younger than me. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. A little girl came after him. Her clothes were bloody too. They began walking towards me. They didn't say anything. Their faces had no expression. So slowly. I almost wished they were running.
"Two of them over here! Do I shoot?"
Dad is sweating a lot. He's kind of fat now. Not skinny like he was when he came back from the Air Force. I never thought about that before. He was just Dad. He drops another crate of food in our new van. "Take 'em Andy."
Okay I tell myself, aim. He's not watching. He knows you can do this. He's doing his job and trusting me to do mine. This must be like it was to be one of his buddies in Afghanistan. Aim. Squeeze.
Down it goes. It's always a surprise when the gun actually kicks. It takes two shots to drop the little girl. I have to wipe the tears from my eyes after the first time I shoot her. Why am I crying? It's just a zombie. In a torn pink nightie.
Jacqueline is firing. One shot, then two. No hurry. She's so cool, like she was a soldier herself. "Ted, we're drawing attention. Try to hurry, okay?"
A door slams. "Got it. Everybody in. Andy, you left behind the Ruger. Don't do that again, okay?"
"Okay Dad." He tosses me the Ruger. I sling it. The magazines for it are in my upper pockets. I'd forgotten about them.
I jump back into the van. There aren't any windows except in the back doors. Huddled in the darkness, I'm glad there are no windows. Nothing I can see here.
It's funny though. As the doors shut and we begin to move, I actually get a good feeling. It's like we're on a team or something, the three of us. If only Mom was here. Then it would be complete.
Jacqueline looks back. It's hard to make out her face from the darkness, the way the sun outlines her. "Good work back there, Andrew. You are one strak little man."
I don't know what "strak" means, but the way she says it, it sounds good.
I'm so tired. I almost panic when we hit someone with the van again. Something goes thump against the back of the van when we stop. "Andy, shoot through the back of the van. Now!"
"How many shots?"
"Give it a full clip! Shoot!"
I shoot at where the thump sound came from. The bullets go right through the metal of the van. They just leave dinky little holes. All the holes are dark. Then suddenly, light is coming through them. We're moving faster.
We stop a couple more times. Just for a minute or two while Dad and Jacqueline shoot stuff. I get ready but they tell me to stay put. When I try looking out the bullet holes I made, I can't see anything. That's starting to bug me.
We stop. Dad and Jacqueline don't do anything this time as Dad shuts off the engine. They just sit there for a second. Dad turns back to me. "We're there, son. Everybody out."
We're back at Grandma's. It suddenly seems so quiet, under the old shady trees. The house always seemed old and clunky before, so big. Built out of those funny old bricks. Dad told me that Grandpa built it himself. The tall chain link fence around the yard alway seemed ugly before. Now it seems so nice, so safe. It's heaven.
My cousins come out with Uncle Dale. I thought they'd be happier to see us. Uncle Dale and Dad hug each other after a moment. My cousins don't say anything as they grab the boxes. Cassandra whispers "It's grandma. She died while you were gone."
"How did she get bitten?"
"She wasn't bitten. Dad said it was a stroke. She's in her bedroom now. They're going to have to burn her or something."
"Talk later kids." Uncle Dale isn't wearing his civil war uniform any more. He's carrying one of the old rifles though, with a bayonet fixed on it. It doesn't look silly anymore. "Andrew, you and your Dad can go in and pay your respects to mom. Your grandmother, I mean."
We go into Grandma's room. There are pictures of her and Grandpa on the walls. Some when they were younger. Dad looks a lot like Grandpa used to. Grandma is so still.
I feel sudden fear. What if her eyes open up. What if she opens her mouth? What if she starts moving?
Someone is whimpering.
It's me.
Dad walks right to her. Dad! She's dead! What if she-
"Come here, son."
He touches her cheek. Then I see a piece of metal in her ear, with some blood around it. It's the head of a nail. A really big, long nail. But to be there, they'd have had to pounded it into her....
"I'm sorry son." Dad puts Grandma's hair back in place, covering it. "It was the only way they could keep her body from becoming one of them."
Then I can touch her. She's cold. I can't cry. "It's not her, is it dad? It's just the shell. Like when Grandpa died. Just the empty shell left behind."
"That's right."
I'm glad she's not here anymore. She was so afraid the last time I saw her, when we dropped off the supplies.
We leave the room.
Jacqueline has given her M16 to Cassandra. She hands her the bag of magazines too. She still has a pistol, an old time army pistol, but won't she need the rifle still?
She walks into the back yard. I remember there's a gate in the fence there. Looking through the fence, I can see a couple of dead bodies lying outside.
Dad tells me to go inside and stands in front of her. They're both silent until I leave. Once I'm in the house, I run to the bathroom. I can hear them through the window from there.
"You promised. You seemed to understand back in the store. Don't get in my way."
"Yes Jacqueline, I promised. But we still need you. We need everyone who can help now."
Her voice sounds funny. Like she's trying not to cry. It sounds a little deeper too. "You have Andrew. From what you told me of your wife, you probably still have your wife too. She's a lucky woman to have you. I didn't fit in the world very well before this all happened. I fit in even less now. Truman was all I had. I want to be with him."
"I don't think you want to die. Someone who expected to die wouldn't have grabbed all those meds back at the pharmacy."
"Reflex. I was running on reflex."
"I don't think you want to die, Jacqueline. I think you're still looking for a reason to live."
"Go back to your son, Ted. He needs you. Your wife will need you too. I'm done. Please, have enough respect for me to let me decide."
I can't see, but I can hear Dad leave. No! Dad, stop her! I run out the back door of the house. She's standing at the gate, getting ready to open it. She's checking her pistol.
I run to her and hug her. Her perfume is really strong now. She was looking kind of ragged when we came in but now I can see she's put on new makeup. "Don't go Jacqueline!"
She hugs me back. She even laughs. "Don't go, Shane!"
"Huh?" I step back. I've heard this once before, on the Venture Brothers, but it didn't make sense. "Who's Shane?"
"It's a great movie. Before your time, Andrew. Did your dad send you out?"
"No, I swear. He'll probably beat my butt for doing this. But I don't want you to go."
"You have your dad and your mom, Andrew. You don't need me."
I look out at the nearby houses. Yards are bigger here. A couple of houses have burned down. I don't see any zombies nearby but I can hear gunshots in the distance.
I hear a screamer in the distance.
It's like this everywhere now.
"Jacqueline, you and dad protected me to get me over here, right? You kept me in the van. Dad kept me in the back, even when I was doing dumb stuff."
"Yes. That's what a dad does. Andrew, please, start calling me Mrs. Bell."
"Okay, Mrs Bell. But you and dad and my mom, you're all good with guns. What about parents who aren't? Or who don't have guns? They'll still protect their kids, even if it means they die. Right? Parents do that too."
"Any parents who are worth a damn."
"Mrs. Bell, there are going to be a lot of kids whose parents weren't like my mom and dad. A lot of kids who don't have parents anymore. They'll need someone to take care of them. Didn't you say you and your husband wanted to adopt but you couldn't? Those people who kept you from adopting, they aren't around anymore. But the kids will be."
Jacqueline- Mrs Bell- looked at me. She gave a sad smile. "You're a very smart little boy, aren't you Andrew?"
"I'm not a little boy. I'm 12."
She smiles. Really smiles this time. "Of course."
People are talking at the front of the house. Up by the gate. Loud voices. Something's going on. I take my carbine off safety and run towards it. Dad's up there. My cousins. I have to...
I turn and look back. Jacqueline has put her pistol away. She's sitting down on a chair inside the gate. She shakes her head. "Go up there and see Andrew. But I don't think you'll need your gun. Take your time. I'll be here when you get back."
I run. Something's going on. I round the corner of the house. The first thing I see is a dark little girl. She looks at me but doesn't say anything. I don't know her. Then I see my Dad and Uncle Dale and Cassandra and..
I'm running forward. I throw my arms around Her. Now I'm crying. Like a dumb little kid. Her arms around me, holding me. So safe. So warm.
Mom.
###

[DTyra]

Well done! It took me a while to figure out how Mrs. Bell could have been an Airborne Ranger. Duh.

[T.J. McFadden]

Good eye DT, you'd be amazed how many people missed that when I first posted this story (it was originally over on TOZW, but all my stories have been pulled from that site-= I'm now peddlin' my papers to ZS exclusively). I had several people point out to me in total seriousness that women weren't allowed in the rangers until after Grenada and Panama. Kinda lets you know who's paying attention. Anyways, next episode: MORTIS EX MACHINA- in which we follow Carla from when we last saw her, exitting stage right, pursued by furies.....

[223shootersc]

very good stuff, need Mrs. Bell to stay

[Nature_Lover]

Thanks for the story!

[T.J. McFadden]

Chapter 4: Mortis ex Machina
by
T.J. McFadden

Sequel to "Father-Son Time", "Carla's Story" and "Apocalypse and Andrew":

The world has gone black and grey. The highway lights are dead. Only the headlights of a lone car provide light. They reflect off broken windshields and hanging mirrors, occasionally flashing across the eyes of predators, making them round, red, reflective circles in the night. The huge old car, engine roaring, rockets down the highway. It's tires are screaming as the driver tries to steer around wrecks. It banks off some in screams of twisted metal as the driver sends it careening down the road.

“Carla Simmons, age 35, wife and mother. Enter stage left, pursued by furies. Cynical men have sometimes made the assertion that no good deed goes unpunished. They would be hard pressed to find a better example than this woman, currently fleeing for her life after having saved the lives of her husband and son. Behind her and around her is a horde of things that used to be her fellow human beings. Now raving monsters intent on stripping her flesh from her bones. She’s driven onto the highway to try to escape. What she doesn’t know is that this particular highway has been rerouted in the last few days. It’s a changed world and she’s about to hit a major detour. A road of horrors, passing between nightmares. A highway going straight into…
the Twilight Zone…”

Carla peered desperately into the darkness, too focused even to curse. Each time she saw an opening, she tried to put on more speed. Each time she did, another wreck came out of the dark. Another thing she had to slow down for. As she slowed, ghostly figures sometimes leapt onto the road, screaming. In the glare of the headlights, they became murderous atrocities done in grey and white, except where blood glittered red. Other figures moved more slowly, easily slammed aside by the car as she drove. Shamblers.

“I’m sorry Samantha, the headlights are drawing them in but without that light, I’d have crashed already!”

Samantha said nothing, trying to sink into the cushions of the car seat. Carla gritted her teeth. There was no one to explain to. No one else to do the job under her guidance. She missed Ted now with an almost physical pain. For a moment, a brief flash of anger went through her head as she thought of him back, safe, with Andrew while she was pursued by these creatures. Then she pushed that thought aside. She’d do it again if she had to. No regrets. Concentrate on survival. Concentrate on something that actually mattered.

She almost didn’t see the wrecks in time. A mass of crashed automobiles, scorched, burned, piled up. She shoved down hard on the brake pedal, ramming it down as she slewed the car, desperately trying to stop. Sudden panic as she felt the brake line rupture and the brake pedal go mushy. The back brakes were still working though, tires screaming as the car spun. Stopped, she could see the off ramp from the highway, blocked by sawhorses and signs. “Closed by order of the Sheriff’s Department”.

Around her, dozens of screams. Even as she shoved her foot down on the gas, she recalled that this was the off ramp to the sheriff’s department. Why was it blocked? Seconds later, the sawhorses shattered into sprays of jagged wood as she rammed through them.

Then a pale, man-sized form leapt onto the hood of her car.

Fear let one unconscious whimper escape from her throat. The rest of her yanked the steering wheel hard to one side or the other, trying to throw the horror off, feet working the gas and what was left of the brakes to try to maintain control. The thing flew off- just as the rear end of her car went into a steep ditch and smashed against a telephone pole.

The world jolted to a halt. Carla took a few precious seconds to get her bearings. Then she hit her seat belt and leaned over to Samantha. No need. The little girl had already unlatched her seat belt and was climbing towards Carla, blank fear in her eyes. Carla threw the door open.

Her mind was already unconsciously registering the lights up ahead. The lights on the Sheriff’s department buildings. Only a few had been lit. That was smart, she realized. They did not want to draw attention. But zombies didn’t use any electric lights at all. She slung her small bag of supplies. Grabbed her rifle in one hand and Samantha’s hand in the other. Ran like hell.

Screams behind her. The nightmarish howls of infected human beings turned into raving animals. She blessed the smooth asphalt of the driveway as she ran with Samantha, ignoring the screams behind her-

She didn’t see the ragged form that lunged at them from the brush, the torn shreds of a waitress uniform hanging off the body, one eye socket gaping empty..

A shrill howl came from a mouthful of shattered, bloody teeth. Carla only saw bloody hands, grabbing for Samantha. She yanked the little girl with panicked strength, flinging her away.

The Screamer grabbed her exposed wrist and bit down.

Carla screamed in pain as jagged, broken teeth ripped her flesh. She shoved the rifle barrel one handed into the empty eyesocket. Pulled the trigger again and again. .22 caliber bullets exploded out of it's skull as she shoved it away. The Screamer fell back, it’s mouth still bloody from her wrist. Carla threw away the empty rifle, cupping her wrist. Samantha had kept fleeing to the lights. “Good girl!” said Carla. Her smile was brief, but sincere. One child would be safe.

Then Carla grimaced as the pain from the bite hit her. It already felt like it was on fire, pain shooting up the nerves of her arm. She had to get some antibiotics, some alcohol on it. Wasn’t the bite of these things how they spread?

Further thought was drowned by dozens of voices behind her. Voices screaming their hunger. She kept staggering, focused on movement. She was almost at the inner fence around the sheriff’s department. It was ten-foot high chain link fence topped by razor wire. Men in uniform waited there, one shouting “Lady, come on!”

Rifles and machine guns opened fire from the roof of the building, Spotlights came to life, lighting the area bright as day. Shooters opened fire without orders, not panicked fire but not tightly controlled either as screamers came raving out of the darkness.

Carla staggered in. She saw Samantha in the distance, one cop sheltering her. Four more were around her. She could see three different types of uniforms. The burning of her wound had become really bad, the kind of pain that could cloud thought. “Please, I need to be treated! One of those things bit me!”

The uniforms all drew back in panic, as if she’d repelled them. Two aimed their guns at her.

Sudden anger at this kind of stupidity. “I’m not one of them! I’ve been bitten by one of them! I need to get this treated!”

“Ma’am, there ain’t no treatment.” The oldest one, out of shape, wearing a deputies’ uniform two sizes too large. “We’ve pumped people full of antibiotics, used disinfectants, even done amputations. None of it does any good!”

Sudden horror as she realizes how much sense that makes. No wonder no one had been curing the victims! But she had to try! “There’s got to be something you can do! I have a son, a husband! They’re waiting for me! That little girl needs me!”

They hold Samantha away from her. She felt torn in two. Part of her wanted to hold her little girl. Part was glad that they had the presence of mind to keep her away from Samantha. She looked at her infected wound and backed away. Focusing every bit of her will, she tried to ignore the pain and the fear. She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head.

One of the men brought his shotgun close to her head. She took it, held it away. “No! Not yet! We have to try- I've just been bitten, it takes time, we can...Just, not in front of her. Don't- not that while she’s here. Samantha, you go with the men. They’ll protect you.”

“You come with me!” Samantha shrieks it out, the words torn from her lungs. The guard, a grown man, can barely hold her tiny figure. “NO! MOMMY!!”

"I'm sick, baby, I have to get taken care of! I have to go get treated!"

“Now, now sweety.” The older deputy held her tight, struggling not to hurt her. He looked at Carla, his expression desperate. “Ma’am, I swear, I’ll protect her. I have granddaughters her age. My wife is here, she’ll look after her. But you have to calm her down.”

Tears in her eyes, Carla tried to smile. “Samantha, it’ll be okay. You go with the deputy. Be a good girl. I'll find you as soon as I'm okay!"

“That's right! Let's have no rash actions here! But do cuff the woman.” He was a big man, overweight, in an expensive suit. An odd figure followed him along with two deputies. A skinny, smaller man with long white hair, his eyes oddly silver in the dark, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. The guards all stood back as he approached. He had the most fatuous smile that Carla had ever seen. “Ma’am, I’m Doctor Tim Freidken. The cuffs are for your own protection. We’ve got an experimental vaccine. It is your only hope. But you have to come with me. That bite is certain death. We’d better bring the little girl too. She’s probably been infected as well.”

“Screw you, freakshow!” The older deputy stood up straight with an effort. “The girl doesn’t have a scratch on her! Try to take her and we’ll see if you and laughing boy can come back from the dead a second time.”

Suddenly, Samantha hid behind him. Carla looked at the tableau before her. The deputy seemed to grow as she watched. The newcomer seemed to shrink at his defiance, while the small silver-haired man cowered. He almost seemed to imitate Samantha.

Finally, the Doctor gatheredhis dignity around himself. “Deputy Czernik, if the girl hasn’t been bitten, she’s no use to us anyways. But watch her. If you missed something and she goes screamer in the middle of the night, it’s not my fault. As to the woman, if you want to argue, feel free to take it up with Commissioner Stavros or Sheriff Johnson.”

Carla let herself be cuffed. Concentrate on the problem at hand, she told herself. A vaccine. If it was real, she needed it as soon as possible. “Deputy Czernik, thank you. Samantha, go with him. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

The Doctor smiled beatifically. “Exactly.”

They walked off quickly. She studied the four men escorting her. Friedkin seemed almost like an actor playing a role. The two deputies were young and hard-faced, unsmiling. The fourth man, the one with the silver eyes, was muttering under his breath. If he got too far from Friedkin, the man grabbed him and pulled him closer. Carla got one clear look at his face. There was a round pale dot on his right temple with scar tissue around it. The dot is the size of a large caliber bullet. Carla tried to figure out how a human being could survive being hit in the head by a bullet that large.

All thought stopped as a sudden chill swept her body. A fever. A low ache in all her muscles and the burning fire in her arm getting worse.

It was spreading.
###
Joseph Czernik watched the man everyone called “Dr Freakshow” as he left with the woman. He silently cursed himself in English and Polish. If he was twenty years younger….

A tiny hand held one of his big, scarred hands. He looked down and smiled. “Hello sweety. Your name is Samantha?”

She couldn’t manage a smile. But she‘d stopped crying. She looked up at him. “The man with the silver hair is broken.”

Czernik nodded, trying to keep the tears from going to his eyes. She looked so much like Patricia at that age….”That’s a pretty good way to say it, honey. Let me take you to my wife. She’ll just love you. Do you like hot cocoa?”

“Joe, we gotta get back to the perimeter.” Roger Croston, one of the local cops who’d come in. A stand-up guy, unlike too many of the men here. “You gonna be okay with the girl?”

“No problem Roj. Just watch your back. I get the idea Freakshow can hold a grudge.”

“Fu-“ Croston started to speak, then remembered the little girl. “Fun for everybody, Joe. You watch your back too.”

Joe walked the little girl through the compound. The entire fenced perimeter of the sheriff’s department swarmed with activity. Truckloads of salvage off the highway jammed the parking lots. Fuel, weapons, food were all being sorted. The problem was, there weren’t enough people to do it. They hadn’t admitted refugees, just supplies. Now the compound was crammed with trucks of supplies and fuel. Three big tanker trucks of gasoline were right next to each other. If that wasn't a formula for disaster, Joe thought, nothing was.

Sheriff Johnson had put the call out as things started to fall apart at the end of the first day. Anyone with a badge- cop, county mounty, state trooper, security guard, whatever- anyone who had a gun should rally at the sheriff’s department. They’d been told to bring immediate families as well, but no one other than spouse and kids. Turned out, that hadn’t been a problem. Most of the men who showed up were alone. The convicts in county stir had all been released on the first day. Except the real hardcases. They’d gotten a bullet in the head to keep them quiet. Joe Czernik didn’t have any problem with that.

Czernik had been a cop of one sort or another for forty years. He’d seen plenty of good, dedicated men. Men who would throw themselves into a fight just to protect someone, not worrying about procedure. Men who regarded their calling as a sacred trust. Then there were the guys who saw the badge as their privilege, their chance at power and a good job with good benefits and retirement. Mike had a sneaking suspicioun that most of the first sort were dead. Had died in the initial wave of infections, before they knew how to kill the screamers, or how they spread their infection.

They entered a section of cells that had been turned over to badges who showed up with their families. Crowded, but built like a fort. From the small prison window, he could see the outside now. Across the compound was Main Admin, it’s windows shuttered but still showing light. As his wife hugged the little girl and tried to make her welcome, he looked at the admin building and wondered what was going on in there.

To the east, dawn was beginning to light the sky.
###
Tim Friedkin looked out the window of his lab as he listened to the centrifuge whirring, the bubbling of vials on the burners. As many drug dealers had found out over the years, your average kitchenette made a pretty good drug lab. This one, adjacent to the assistant chief deputies office, was now his. The assistant chief deputy had last been seen staggering down the highway with one arm mostly torn off.

Let them try to say he wasn't a doctor after this! Just because he hadn't slaved away for eight years at a diploma mill, then slaved away for six more years as an intern at a hospital. He knew enough! If this serum worked....

He looked at the alien.

That was what he had to be.

His eyes weren't humanly green. His blood was the wrong shade of red.

Most important, he kept coming back to life.

Tim had been staying - okay, hiding- at the derelict old farm his parents had left him when they passed away twenty years ago. How ironic that the pesthole he'd fled as a teenager had become his final refuge during the zombie apocalypse. He'd barely noticed the lights in the sky and the impact three days ago that had rattled the windows in the old farmhouse.They had all skipped his attention in the blind terror of the news reports of zombies. When a staggering figure appeared at his door, he'd shot it with his father's old Russian pistol, a souvenir of the Korean war.

Oh, how he had cursed himself then. An alien. A real alien! And he'd killed it! Until, four hours after he'd shot it, it began moving again. He'd been ready to shoot it again, but he'd held off. When it looked at him with a dazed but almost human expression on it's face, he'd been overjoyed.

He'd studied the thing. He'd seen how the burns and scratches on the body, the cuts from being dragged over broken glass into the house healed with incredible speed. Even the bullet hole in it's skull. He'd broken out his microscope and the other scientific gear he'd collected over a lifetime.

Not a doctor? He'd shown them before. This time, he'd show them all!

He'd seen the black specks in the creatures blood. Identical to the black specks in the blood of the shamblers and screamers. But in it's blood, they'd been frantically whirling and moving. You could almost sense the purpose. In human blood, they seemed random, confused, aimless.

That was the contagion. That was the cure. He was sure of it.

He took the vials of serum that were cooling and studied them carefully. Dosage might be important. Now for the test subjects.

"Friedkin! Are you ready or not?"

Sheriff George Johnson. His sponsor, for now. Ever since he'd let the man watch his alien come back to life after he shot it in the chest. His sponsor and protector, if he could produce a cure.

"Of course, Sheriff. Coming out."
###
It was so clear, so tranquil. She was getting out of her car. Walking to her mother in law's house. She liked the old lady and her father in law. More than she liked her own father. It was so quiet and she was so hungry. They were standing out front, transfixed. Ted, smiling, so happy. Andrew, running towards her, growing but still her little boy for a while. Throwing himself into her arms, so warm, the blood in his veins so alive.

So hungry.

He began to struggle just before her teeth closed on his throat, the hot blood, so good, so needed, gushing over her face, Andrew screaming in terror, piercing screams, so good-

Carla woke gasping, her body shivering with fever chills. The whole right side of her body was numb or in agony, as if ground glass had been poured into her bloodstream. She could still feel echoes of the desire for warm blood, to feed, to rend-

"Kill me. Kill me now, please."

It was her voice. She hardly recognized it.

The screams from cell 14 drowned out her voice.

TO BE CONTINUED

[T.J. McFadden]

MORTIS EX MACHINA
PART 2
by
T.J. McFadden

It was so clear, so tranquil. She was getting out of her car. Walking to her mother in law's house. She liked the old lady and her father in law. More than she liked her own father. It was so quiet and she was so hungry. They were standing out front, transfixed. Ted, smiling, so happy. Andrew, running towards her, growing but still her little boy for a while, throwing himself into her arms, so warm, the blood in his veins so alive.

So hungry.

He began to struggle just before her teeth closed on his throat, the hot blood, so good, so needed, gushing over her face, Andrew screaming in terror, piercing screams, so good-

Carla woke gasping, her body shivering with fever chills, the whole right side of her body going numb or in agony, as if ground glass had been poured into her bloodstream. She could still feel echoes of the desire for warm blood, to feed, to rend-

"Kill me. Kill me now, please."

It was her voice. She hardly recognized it.

The screams from cell 14 drowned out her voice.

When she'd collapsed, 14 had been an older man, fevered, tired, but still human. Now he threw himself against the cell bars, slamming his body against them, screaming. The lights had been turned off, but the early morning light coming in the small cell windows showed what was happening. The other four prisoners, each in their own cell, pushed themselves as far away as they could. Each of them were not much better than 14 had been an hour ago. If the cells weren't each separated by cinderblock walls.....

"Shut him the hell up!" A voice used to command. The lights were coming on. Sheriff Johnson, Friedkin and his strange little sidekick. County Commissioner Stavhros. A few others. One of the deputies stepped forward and shot prisoner 14 with a taser. There was a crackle of electricity.

Prisoner 14 dropped like a sack of flour.

"The damned things are getting smarter." The sheriff was speaking. "Not the shamblers, but the screamers. They're starting to use cover and run away from guns. Not human intelligence. More like smart wolves."

"Then we must become smarter as well." Stavros was older, dark complected, short and overweight. Carla dimly remembered seeing him on campaign posters before. He'd been smiling then. "We need to deputize more civilians. Form a militia. We will not be able to do this with law enforcement alone."

Johnson snorted. "Send a bunch of armed civilians out there and turn the county into a free fire zone? No thanks. That's the one thing that would make this situation worse."

The Sheriff pushed Friedkin forward. "Doctor Friedkin. There's your first subject."

"Can't one of your people-"

"Doctor, get in there and give him that shot." Johnson spoke with a voice of doom and command.

Hesitantly, Friedkin stepped into the cell and produced a needle. He shot something into the body, lunging back out of the cell. The door was slammed shut.

Everyone in the room watched, desperate fear and hope on their faces.

Carla looked at Friedkin's little sidekick. He was looking back at her.

Those eyes weren't human.

The man on the floor groaned, mumbling something.

Friedkin was suddenly brisk. "Okay, let's try the other subjects. Deputy, taser them as well. I'm not going into a cell with someone who might go screamer at any moment."

Carla looked up briefly to see a deputy pointing a taser at her. Then the world went black and white, her whole body twisting, new agony shooting down her veins, up her spinal column.

She collapsed and fell to the floor, her body refusing to obey her commands. All the pain was gone.

A stinging in her arm. A needle. Then it was gone.

The fever was gone. Her arms suddenly felt normal. The pain was gone. The echo of the cell door was still ringing in the air when she began to get up. Her only ache was the bite, a normal, dull ache. Almost comforting in it's normalcy.

One by one, each of them was tasered and injected. The last two begged not to be tasered. The guard laughed and shot them anyways.

Carla remembered officers who'd laughed and joked with her father after being called on domestic violence charges. She got the feeling this one would have loved her dad.

"The secret to the vaccine is to centrifuge out the viral elements, then boil them. It renders them inactive. After that, the natural elements of the body can deal with them, developing an immunity. I've also incorporated several natural immunity boosters into the serum, to speed up the process."

"That isn't how a vaccine works.." The prisoner just down from Carla spoke quietly.

"And yet my vaccine worked on you, professor!" Friedkin stood at the bars to her cell, grinning. "The arrogance of modern science is so incredible. None of you ever appreciated the power of herbal remedies to let the body heal itself. I've studied the natural healing methods of the Native Americans. They had some amazing knowledge."

"It’s a damned shame it didn't help them against typhus." The woman stood, still a little shaky. "Their vast herbal knowledge didn't stop smallpox or measles either. I saw your resumes when you applied at the University. They were lies. You're a fraud."

Carla gritted her teeth. In her experience, brutal honesty worked best when you were both on the same side of the prison bars. Taunting someone on the other side of the prison bars rarely worked out well.

"Professor, his cure worked." The sheriff put his hand on Friedkin's shoulder. "That's good enough for me. Of course, we'll be keeping you all in these cells for a few days to make sure there's no relapse. Doctor, I think your little friend should go into one of the cells too, for safe keeping. I know that the cells you injected came out of his body."

Friedkin got a sick expression on his face. "Well, yes. that's true. Proprietary knowledge is valuable. We already have enough to go to Washington with this."

"Let's wait a while. Test it more. Be sure it works." Commissioner Stavros looked at them with cold dark eyes. "This plague is eliminating a great many unneeded people. Clearing away the deadwood. And the longer this goes on, Doctor, the more people will pay us for the vaccine."

They locked Friedkin's little man in the cell next to Carla. She could swear he seemed more cogent. The professor spoke up. "He's scamming you! That's what he does! He-"

"Oh shut up!" The sheriff himself shot her with another taser. Laughing, the group left the room, leaving behind only one guard. After a few minutes, she heard a low moan, then a muffled curse from the professor's cell.

Carla spoke quietly. "I hate to contradict you, but that vaccine did seem to work."

"It shouldn't!" The voice was peevish, angry. Exhaustion was layered in every word. "Vaccines do not work that way!"

For her part, Carla felt revitalized, brimming with energy. Supercharged.

"You realize that at some point, they'll have to re-infect us, to see if it works as a vaccine." Her voice was fading even more. "That is, assuming they have even that level of scientific...com..."

Silence. For a moment, Carla held her breath. If the vaccine killed-

Then she heard a loud, exhausted snore.

Carla paced her cell, wondering. Outside, she could hear another volley of gunfire. More distant howls of screamers.

That was when she saw the long fingers coming around the wall.

There was an extra knuckle in each finger.

She couldn't help it. She reached out. Their fingers brushed.

The world went away.
###
Primitive world jump fractures only reason so close why so much spacejunk, no chance of hitting HIT millions to one cargo spilled shattered ship shattered, sprayed across space approaching world gravity well sucked in cargo withstands heat, cold mechanisms with moving parts of single molecules, healing rebuilding raining down on world wrong race not for them wrong healing keep trying to heal nervous system too similar self- replicating as long as healing is needed wrong healing dormant from heat until nervous system impulses for power try to warn violate contact must tell NO NO NO
###
"I just have to go back to my quarters for a minute. I'll be right with you, Commissioner Stavros. Or after this, should I get ready to call you Mr President?"

Grinning, Tim Friedkin went back towards his quarters. It had worked! Even with those two figuring out his secret- that it was the undamaged black viral particles from the alien that were the key- even then, they were keeping him as part of the deal. Not as good as the 100 percent he'd been planning on getting, but they seemed like competent business partners at least.

And, of course, there were always ways to augment the income. He heard the person following him almost and kept walking. Once inside the door to his quarters he stopped and turned. It was Johnson's legal assistant, some lawyer or something. His shirt and three piece suit were looking rumpled and sweat stained but for this place and time, he appeared fairly dapper. His smile told Friedkin everything he needed to know. "Yes?"

"Dr Friedkin, I'm Josh Huxton, legal assistant to-"

"Yes, I know. I have an encyclaepedic memory for names. Step into my office."

They stepped in. Huxton didn't even make sure the door was shut. That told Friedkin a lot.

"Doctor, do you have any extra, uh, vaccines? Congratulations on them working, by the way. Sounds like you're going to be the next Nobel prize winner. But did you have any other, uhm, doses?"

"Well, I need to reserve a few for testing purposes, of course." He put his bag on his desk, carefully, so the 20 vials of vaccine in it wouldn't risk being broken.

"I understand, but I've got some special circumstances here." Huxton grimaced with pain and dug in a briefcase he was carrying. As he dug, Friedkin noticed a thick dressing on the younger man's right forearm. Until then, it had been concealed by his shirtsleeve. It was just the size of a bite mark. He noticed it even more when Huxton came out with a thick stack of bills. "They're hundred dollar bills. Thousands of dollars worth. Enough to, uh, fund your research. Aren't they worth one immunization?"

Friedkin smiled. "Of course. Medical research is fearsomely expensive. I suppose one dose of vaccine wouldn't ruin everything. Of course, this needs to be kept confidential."

The look of relief on Huxton's face was pathetically obvious. Friedkin watched him leave the office and swept his newfound cash into a desk drawer just as an older, distinguished man, a woman the same age, and two pre-teen children came into the room. "Deputy Mayor Whitscomb, what a pleasant surprise! What can I do for you?"

"The vaccine." The older man's face was set and grim. "If there's an immunization, I want it for my grandchildren. And for my wife and myself, of course."

Friedkin pitched his voice carefully. He knew how to do a sales pitch that didn't sound like a sales pitch. "Mr Whitscomb, these vaccines will be in limited supply for a long time. It might be months before we can immunize people who haven't been bitten yet. These.should be saved for people who have already been infected."

"The hell with them! If there's an immunization, my grandchildren will have it. Here." He produced a small velvet pouch- a crown royal pouch, interestingly- and poured out a dozen gleaming coins. Friedkin recognized them instantly. "Those are gold double eagles. Forget cash, Friedkin. Gold is what people will want. I'll give you all of these for four immunizations."

Friedkin fought down the urge to snatch the coins. "I don't know. I'm sure Commissioner Stavhros will get you the vaccine as soon as possible. I mean, I know you two are old political enemies, but certainly he wouldn't extend some grudge this far...Still, it would be hard to explain four missing vials of vaccine, perhaps two could be..."

"Bull! For an untested vaccine? These should be more than-"

"William Whitscomb!" The woman spoke sharply. Friedkin restrained a grin. She sounded like she'd been sharpening her voice on her husband for a long time. "Our grandchildren will have that vaccine! I had to kill my own daughter yesterday. I will not let that happen again! Pay the man!"

Friedkin was putting away the gold coins when a deputy walked into the room. He recognized the deputy as one who'd been with them at the test. The one who'd used the taser. "Hello doctor."

"Hello Deputy. How can I help you?"

"Doc, I kinda need the vaccine. Now." The deputy gave a rueful, aw-shucks grin that Friedkin would have bet just melted the hearts of all the local girls. Then he pulled up his pants leg. The slashed wound was bright red with infections, with black streaks running from it. "Been getting real hard to keep this hidden, y'know?"

Friedkin got the feeling that this customer was not one to bargain too harshly with. "Please Deputy, call me Doctor. What do you have to pay?"

The deputy kept grinning as he drew his pistol. "Simple, Doc. I'm asking. I'm even saying please. If you say no, I shoot you in the kneecap. Then I ask you nicely again."

Friedkin nodded and pulled out an ampule. "Let's see that leg, please."

He bent over the deputy's leg with a needle and suddenly felt a pistol barrel against his forehead. "By the way, Doctor, don't even think about a bubble of air in the hypodermic. I'lll live long enough to blow your brains out."

Friedkin carefully tapped the bubble out of the hypodermic. "Of course, deputy."
###
Energy lines ran like silver threads through the structure, in and around the nutrient flow, among the tissue. The fluid swarmed with particles, cells, nutrients and the machines. Swarming through the flow, picking out nutrients, touching against the energy lines, the nerve tissues, drawing power for their tasks, repairing damage, fixing wounded cells and always, building more machines. Ever more, as many as were needed to fix the structure, to find what was needed, to rebuild.

Even though it was wrong, the structure was wrong, chemicals wrong, nutrients wrong, keep fixing, so much to fix, patch so it can keep running, make it work even if wrong, until it could be fixed properly, so long as orders and power flowed down the silver lines of nerve, the impulses that were both energy and command, even if the command center was dark.
Dark and tainted and wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
"WRONG!" Carla screamed as she jerked to wakefullness, banging her head against the bars of the jail cell.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" One of the other inmates of the cells. He was almost dancing around in his cell. He was young, black and nervous. Carla wondered briefly if he was on drugs. Then she noticed that she was having difficulty standing still too. She seemed to be flooded with nervous energy.

" Okay. What happened with the person in the cell next to me?"

"He sleepin'! Dropped off right after you two touched digits. That was three hours ago! What was that about?"

"I don't know. What about the biology professor, the woman they tasered?"

"I'm here. Tired as shit, but I seem to be okay. I'm Professor Marjorie Rheinhold. Pleased to meet you." The woman's voice was thick with exhaustion. "You all seem to be ready to party. Why I'm so exhausted, I have no idea."

Desperately, Carla tried to comprehend the images that had poured through her head. These were almost like old memories. Broken memories. Shattered pictures taped together badly. To make it harder, her nervous energy made it harder to focus, to concentrate.

Nervous energy. The nerves worked by tiny electrical impulses. She remembered that from biology. And from "The Matrix".

Machines. Energy. In the bloodstream. Powered by tiny jolts of electricity. She'd read science fiction novels. Mostly she read romances but there were a lot of science fiction romance novels coming out these days. A lot of horror romances too, but she had the feeling they wouldn't be nearly as popular after this.

Science fiction. Tiny machines. Nanotechnology, that was it.

The door opened. Commissioner Stavros entered cautiously, looking around. He seemed to be expecting someone. As he stood there, a man spoke behind him. "Commissioner, I'm sorry, I had an errand to run."

"Deputy, don't keep me waiting again. We need to check Doctor Friedkin's work. Professor Rheinhold?"

"Yes. Why how nice meeting you again Commissioner." Sarcasm oozed through her exhaustion.

"Do you want to stay inside that cell or are you prepared to be reasonable? I need someone to inspect our first subject. Someone who knows the human body. But if you'd rather stay locked up for the rest of the testing-"

Her voice picked up. "Oh, of course, Commissioner. However can I help?"

Even trying to sound eager, her voice seemed to pull energy from Carla. As the deputy let her out and she went to cell 14, Carla tried to organize the thoughts in her head. She called out. "Professor, have you ever heard of nanotechnology?"

Stavhros observed as the deputy unlocked the cell door. The Professor spoke. "Microscopic technology. Star trek stuff. It's great in theory. Why?"

"Would nanotechnology act like a disease?"

"I suppose so. They'd be tiny machines, duplicating the functions of individual cells. Conventional biological controls would have no effect on them, of course. Look, I've got to check this man." Her voice was starting to sound distracted. Carla had heard of scientific curiosity before. This woman seemed to have it by the truckload.

Then the man she was examining opened his eyes.

He screamed.

He threw himself on her, their bodies tangling. The Professor shrieked hysterically, begging in a frantic voice "NO! NO!"

A final shriek and then gurgling. Carla could see them rolling on the floor, the woman still struggling. Stavros threw himself back, shouting "Deputy! Shoot them!"

Eyes wide with madness, the deputy screamed and leapt onto Stavros, his teeth white until he clamped them onto the fat man's throat. Stavros' shocked face looked upward as blood gushed. Then the deputy's mad face, his mouth trailing strands of torn flesh, pulled away from the gaping hole in the commissioner's throat.

Carla looked on in shocked silence. Stavros thrashed frantically, wet noise bubbling from his ripped throat, then lay still. The other prisoners shouted for help, their panicked cries drowning out the screams of the dead and the dying.
###
Tim Friedkin mentally totaled his profits as he stepped into the meeting room. He'd sold five more of the vaccines. Most had paid in jewelry. He'd had to pawn a fair number of items in his life and he had a pretty good eye for the valuable stuff. Payment for one dose was the gleaming Rolex on his wrist.

Amazing. Getting people to take a flu shot was damned near impossible, but after the last few days, offer them a vaccine for the zombie plague and they'd sell their souls to get it.

The conference room had a small buffet laid out for the lunchtime meeting. Sheriff Johnson was there, making a sandwich. Other county government members stood around making small talk. It was remarkable how many had managed to make it here. Two of them gave Friedkin dirty looks. One was the man he'd gotten the Rolex from.

Commissioner Stavros was nowhere to be seen, however. Neither was Whitscomb. Huxton was in the corner, talking a mile a minute with the Sheriff.

There was a scream out in the hall. Friedkin looked out, down the hallway of the conference room, past the man in the flak vest guarding the door.

Mrs. Whitscomb staggered out into the hall, blood all over her. Then a tiny, gory figure leapt on her back, tearing at her, screaming as the old woman tried to crawl down the hallway, horror in her eyes.

Friedkin recognized the pajamas that the bloody attacker was wearing. And the blond hair, now spattered with blood.

A sudden scream tore through the room. With a sinking feeling, Friedkin turned and saw Huxton leap onto Sheriff Johnson, wrestling with the older man, biting at his hands. A second scream tore the air as one of the other people Friedkin had immunized went screamer as well, leaping on a nearby deputy.

The sheriff, face twisted in murderous fury, fired the big magnum he carried using his undamaged hand- the one that wasn't suddenly short of fingers and spouting blood. In the enclosed room the shots were deafening, hammering the ears with almost physical force. Drowning out even the screams of people hit by bullets from the magnum. Bullets that easily passed through several human bodies at this range.
###
Carla Simmons now knew exactly what hell was like. She was stuck in it. Screams of panic and mindless fury echoing off concrete walls. People calling on the Almighty, screaming prayers and curses and pain, begging for rescue. To make it worse, she felt like she was about to jump out of her own skin. Like all her nerves were wires running through her body.

Touch that arm again? She looked down at the odd-knuckled hand that had reached around the wall. It was moving slowly- then quicker.

The first screamer, from Cell 14, was leaping at it.

"No! No! Run!" She screamed at the other prisoner, at the screamer, at the world, the words seeming to burn in her throat. The screamer looked at her and lunged, his mass rattling the bars of her cell as he threw himself against it with maniacal energy. Gripping arms reached for her, the screams of hunger an almost physical force.

"We're all infected! We're all going to become screamers if we don't do something!" Carla howled, holding her body against the wall, staring upwards at the single light bulb in the ceiling of the jail cell.

"He immunized us! He killed the germs!" One woman in another cell wailed it, chanting the denial like a mantra. "He killed the germs with the vaccine! You saw!"

"They aren't germs!" The words became clear to her as she spoke them. "They're machines! Tiny machines! That's why antibiotics don't kill them!"

"He said he boiled them!" The woman clenched hands around her head, bobbing her head up and down, eyes tightly shut.

"You don't boil a machine you dumb bitch!" The black man in the opposite cell looked like he was about to jump out of his own skin. "They nanobots, like in the cartoons! You smash 'em! Or short 'em out!"

Carla's eyes went wider with sudden realization. The taser! They'd all been hit with the taser! That had cured them.

Until the vaccine was injected into them!

Now the infected deputy was leaping at the door as it opened. As another deputy came in, gun drawn. The infected deputy leapt on the man, tearing at his face, out of her reach.

Idea. A real light bulb of an idea. But she needed to reach the lightbulb. And, she could feel it, she needed to reach it soon.

"Stick your fingers in the light sockets! The shock will kill the machines! The, the nanobots!"

"Bitch, you crazy!" The young black man had seemed so polite before.

She needed to get past those gripping hands, to the light bulb.

Frantically, she looked around and saw a towel, left behind by the previous inmate. She knew she had no time. She'd seen this in a movie once. If it didn't work-

Back pressed against a wall, she steeled her mind to shut out the screams, the panic, the noise. She grabbed the towel, shoved it into the toilet- then took the long, dripping rag and wrapped it in a figure 8 around the wrists of the screamer that was trying to get into her cell. The wet cloth wrapped tight around the wrist as it reached for her. They kept knotting tighter as the screamer thrashed, trapped with it's arms wrapped around the cell bars. She could hear bones popping from their joints as it tried to tear itself loose.

Throwing her weight against the trapped arms, she felt them break, felt rather than heard the sickening crunch as she pushed herself under the lightbulb. She frantically unscrewed it with trembling hands. Hands she could barely control. Finally, she shoved her index finger, still dripping from the towel, into the light socket.
###
Tim Friedkin crawled out from under the wreckage of the buffet table. He was sodden with red punch and potato salad. His head ached from the punchbowl that had clipped him when he ducked under the table. He rose, unsteadily, groaning as his ankle suddenly sent agony through his body. Yep, he thought to himself, he'd twisted it.

Light poured in through the broken windows of the conference room. With it drifted the sound of gunshots, screams, shouts of pain and fear. The heavy petrochemical smell of gasoline. The sunlight seemed obscenely bright as it shone over the carnage.

Most of the people had fled the gathering. There were five bodies lying among the wreckage. The sixth body was still alive, Sheriff Johnson, his torn hand wrapped in bloody cloth, sprawled in a chair. He looked at Friedkin, a bottle of whiskey gripped in one fist. Took a swig and laughed.

"Of course. Doctor, you would be the one who didn't get bitten. I gotta admit, I've seen some con men in my life, but you well and truly beat them all. Snowed ever-body includin' me." He knocked back a considerable portion of the bottle then. Probably the reason for his slurring his words. "How many a'them damn fake vaccines didja sell?"

Friedkin tried to summon his dignity one last time. "The vaccine wasn't a fake!"

"Damnit, ya idjit, dontcha know y'never buy yer own snake oil? Ever-one you gave that vaccine to is infected!"

Suddenly the electric lights went out. Emergency lights cut on in the hallway. Outside, there was a sudden low "Whoompf" sound, a sudden smell of burning. Friedkin could hear more gunshots, more screams outside.

"Tell me, Doctor" Johnson ladled a huge dollop of sarcasm onto that last word. "One of the people you sold a vaccine to, was it some twitchy old fart with a ponytail, wore grey coveralls?"

"Uhm...Maybe."

Johnson threw the empty whiskey bottle at Friedkin. He missed by a mile. "That's the guy who ran the fuel point. Never could get him to stop smoking around the gas. Damn hippy."

Friedkin tried to move, almost yelped with pain, then began limping towards the door. "I'll go get help, Sheriff. Some bandages for that hand..."

"I been bit an' I'm gonna turn and you know it!" Friedkin heard Johnson behind him.

The magnum roared.

A supernova of pain exploded in Friedkin's knee as a piledriver impact flipped him bodily.

He wound up looking back at Johnson, who grinned evilly. The smoking magnum was steady in his good hand.

Shock kept back much of the pain as Friedkin shouted. "You shot me! You lunatic!"

Johnson kept grinning as he brought the pistol to his own head. "Lots of people are going to want to talk to you, Doctor. Don't be in such a hurry to leave. But as for me- I ain't comin' back as one of them things. What is it the kids say? Peace out!"

The pistol boomed.

Tears running down his face, Friedkin choked back noises of pain as he checked his shattered kneecap in the dim light. Working more on reflex than anything else, he took his own belt, threw a tourniquet around his leg to keep from bleeding out through the shattered knee.

Then two of the corpses let out low moans. One of them was Huxton. There was shuffling movement out in the hallway.

Suddenly, Friedkin could ignore his pain. Ignore the sunbursts of agony exploding in his knee as he dragged himself across the room to Johnson's gory corpse. The big .44 Magnum was still in one hand. Friedkin pried the Sheriff's fingers loose, sparing one look and giving a mad giggle. Clint Eastwood hadn't been entirely right. The .44 didn't blow a head clean off. Just most of the upper half.

Two small, shuffling figures appeared in the door, their faces gory masks. They were just the size of children. They shambled out of the shadows, towards Friedkin.

The corpse of Huxton staggered to it's feet, looking at him.

"I've got one last prescription for you, Huxton." Friedkin couldn't resist a grim smile as he carefully aimed and pulled the trigger of the big magnum.

Click.

Huxton came closer slowly. The two child-zombies moved faster towards him. The hulking, shambling form of Whitscomb appeared in the door. All their eyes reflected silver in the light from outside the window.

Click.
Click.
Click.

Timothy Friedkin began to whimper as the hammer dropped on another empty chamber.

Teeth gleamed in the sunlight.
###
Screams got monotonous after a while. Particularly when you were tired.

Get up, you whiny little bitch. Nobody's going to pick you up.

She was so tired. Tired in every fiber of her being.

Fine, stay where you are. You can smell the old urine from the toilet, the stink of dead bodies. You belong here. How did you ever think you'd get away from this?

The filthy concrete of the cell floor was rough against her cheek. The screams almost sounded familiar. Good old mom and dad.

Go ahead. Lay down and die, you whiny little bitch. It's where you belong.

Her father's voice.

"No." Her throat felt like raw sandpaper. She forced her arms to move, to lift herself off the floor. Her voice was a rasping, exhausted growl. "No. I will not die in this place. I will not die in this stinking filthy cell!"

You belong here, you whiny little bitch!

"Screw you, dad!" Carla Simmons dragged herself off the floor, onto the prison cot. All her nervous energy was gone. Her finger hurt like hell. Her ears hurt from all the screaming. There were more screamers now, in the other cells. They hadn't believed her.

"Car-Laa" A strange voice, raspy, hesitant. From the next cell over. "Car-Laa."

"I'm here. You saw into my head the way I saw into yours, didn't you?"

"Yes, Car-Laa. Direct neural...Direct..."

She looked at the broken-armed corpse still trying to get at her. "I may not have had the words in my head that you need, Arrrrrr."

Wait, that was his name, she thought to herself. She hoped he was remembering what he'd seen better than she was. It was beginning to go all fuzzy and confused in her head, like trying to remember a dream.

"Accident. So sorry. Mind healing now, same nano-bots that do this to you, heal me."

"Wait, are you talking with that thing?"

A familiar voice, cutting through her exhaustion. The young black man. She looked at him, stunned. "You did it! You said I was a crazy bitch but you did it!"

"Yeah, I shocked myself. I mean, No, I said that other lady was a crazy bitch! So is freakazoid over there talking? He some kind of alien? Tell ET to phone home, dammit! Take me to the freakin' mothership!"

"He's as trapped as we are." Carla looked at a bloody mess in the passage between the cells. The deputy had taken a shotgun blast to the face. Well, he wasn't coming back.

He had a ring of keys at his belt. And a gun. "Can you reach his body? Get his keys? We need to get out of here!"

A flickering yellow light had replaced the steady sunlight in some of the windows. Carla had a pretty good idea what that was.

"Yeah! Yes, I can do that!" The young man reached suddenly for the deputy's body- then threw himself backwards as the gory body of the professor lunged at him. Now a shambler, she let out a low, animal growl. She was followed by the dead commissioner Stavros, now also a shambler.

An impossibly long, thin arm reached for the body of the deputy. Carla held her tongue, trying not to give away what she saw, but shambler/Stavros whirled and leapt on the long, thing arm, grabbing it and biting.

Arrrrr screamed, a high, inhuman wail. Then Carla recognized words. "It cannot infect me! Quickly, grab the body!"

Then Arrrrr's scream rose even higher into wordless, mindless pain. Carla lunged forward, ignoring the screamer still trapped by the bars of her cell, grabbing the Deputie's shirtsleeve as shambler/Professor ignored her, trying to reach the young black man.

He kicked at the shambler's arms, trying to break them. "Lady, if you get out of here, remember me. David Treadwell! Remember my name! Now grab that body!"

He leapt forward, twisting to avoid the biting teeth. He wrapped both thick arms around one arm reaching through his bars and pulled, yanking the shambler forward with a crunching of bones, jamming her between the bars, still thrashing and biting.

Carla reached forward and grabbed the deputies body, pulling him close, seeing the key ring and the pistol belt, pistol still in it.

Then she made the mistake of glancing to her left. She wished she hadn't.

Shambler/Stavros had used his greater weight to pull Arrrr partway through the bars, the skinny body collapsing and tearing as he was pulled through. His long neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Frantically, she grabbed for the gun, dodging the stomping feet of the screamer still trapped in the bars of her cell, fumbling with the holster strap, out, out! Aim!

She saw the moment when Arrrrr's neck gave way and tore. Built for a lighter gravity, she suddenly knew that. Bits of knowledge that were a gift from his touch. The same way she knew that separating the brainstem was the final, ultimate way to shut down the nanobots- even the ones in Arrrr. Separated from the source of their energy, they finally shut down, the magnetic valences that held them together separating.

Even the ones that had been healing him.

"Damn you!" she screamed. It was her turn to scream. Screaming, she rose to her feet, shooting the screamer in the face three times. She thrust the pistol out between the bars and fired it at Stavros/zombie, her aim thrown off. It took four shots. He rocked as bullet after bullet punched into his body, teeth sunk in the skinny arm of the alien. Finally, one struck his forehead. Eyes blank, he collapsed.

"Look out! That crazy bitch got away!"

Carla jumped back just in time, aimed at shambler/professor, fired two careful shots. Double tap. Ted always talked about a double-tap. .

The professor's makeup-smeared face collapsed as she fell.

She reached for the dead deputies' pistol belt, grabbed the keys and unlocked her cell. Took the spare magazine as she stood between the two cells with screamers still in them. Shot each twice. The slide locked back. She put in a fresh magazine.

The young black man in the cell was shouting at the dead corpse of the professor, her blood covering the front of his clothes. "Yeah bitch, that's right! I'm just a street thug and you so much damn smarter than me! Didn't you say that? But now you dead, bitch!'

"STOP CALLING WOMEN BITCHES!" All her pent up fury seemed to pour out as she aimed her pistol at the man in the cell. "I SWEAR, if I HEAR you call one more woman a bitch, I will shoot you in the face! STOP IT!"

Eyes wide in fear, he fell back, hands up in supplication. "I'm sorry! You're absolutely right, I should not use that word! I am so very, very sorry! I will never use it again! I've just had a very stressful day and I'm, I'm not myself!"

He looked like he was about to cry. Dimly, Carla's mind recalled him shouting his name- David Treadwell -then holding back the shambler. Then warning her when it tore loose. She put the gun down, the manic reaction fading. She unlocked Treadwell's cell door. He was silent, hesitant as he came out, while Carla searched the body of the deputy for more gear.

Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet. "That was very brave what you did, holding her back so I could get the gun. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Ma'am. I'm sorry she got away, but there was so much blood, she was slick and just...."

"Mommy!"

Outside the cellblock door. Carla opened it. Samantha was outside, standing in the sun. She rushed into Carla's arms..

The old cop, Czernik, a smoking 12 gauge in his hand, ambled up to them. He grinned as he spoke. "When things started goin' crazy, your little girl there jumped out the window to go rescue you! We had to come after her or I'd never hear the end of it from the missus. Good thing we did, too, 'cuz this place is about to blow sky high!"

Carla had noticed the flickering lights outside the windows. Now she saw flames shooting up from close-packed vehicles in the overflowing parking lot. She didn't think there was time to explain, but Czernik kept talking. "Told 'em we had too much stuff packed together. When those screamers started running around like dinks in the wire, it was Tet, '68 all over again. No telling what started the gas truck burning, but that sucker is gonna blow."

"We gotta get out of here!" Treadwell looked around, sticking close to Carla.

Czernik gave Carla a wry look. "What about the spook?"

"Watch it old man, I heard that!"

Carla nodded, holding Samantha in her arms. "He saved my life. Let him go. And don't call him a spook."

Czernik shrugged. "Sorry, sorry, that's just how I grew up. Damn, everybody's the frikkin' NAACP now!"

As they came out of the cellblock into the open, a wave of heat hit them. There was a low "whoomf" sound as a car's gas tank exploded and a stench of burning petrochemicals. A tall, younger cop with "Croston" on his nametag, dressed in SWAT gear, came running up to them. "Get in the van! We're bugging out!"

As they ran, an airhorn blasted and a big rig towing a fuel trailer rolled forward, ramming aside cars. As it passed, Carla and the rest leapt into the back of the SWAT van, already packed with half a dozen people. . She looked at the rifles and boxes of ammunition racked against the walls and felt a little safer. One part of her mind noticed that Croston looked to be more than half “spook” himself, yet Czernik didn’t have any problem taking his orders. Men were funny that way.

Croston was shouting into a walkie talkie. "Dammit, move that damned bus! Just shove aside the burning car! I swear, if you don't haul ass right now, I will leave you here to burn! Give it the gas!"

One door of the van was still hanging open with Croston leaning out as he shouted into the radio. Carla saw a schoolbus suddenly ram between two burning cars and catch up with them as they neared the highway. Croston looked at her and shrugged. "I love that woman but my wife has just never learned to drive aggressively. Hi, I'm Roger Croston."

"Pleased to meet you. Carla Simmons." She saw two hatches in the roof of the SWAT van, occupied by cops who were apparently shooting. There was a steady rattle of gunshots as they went up the ramp onto the highway. Moments after they were outside of the fence, one of the burning tanker trucks exploded, rattling their windows.

"Well, there goes our base. Where the hell do we go now?" Croston shut the door and looked at Czernik. "You got any ideas?"

Carla spoke up. "While you decide that, my Mother in law's house is down the road a ways. Could you drop Samantha and I off there? If I know my husband, sooner or later he'll run to Mommy."

Czernik laughed. "Hell, after the last few days, I wish I could run to my Mommy. Your name is Carla Simmons? Do you know a Dave Simmons? Works as a security guard? We worked one post together."

"That's my husband. Hopefully he's at my in-law's house."

"Too bad it's not Ted Simmons." Croston spoke. "He was a buddy of mine in the national guard. Before he wussed out and left to join the Air Force."

Carla shook her head. Sometimes she forgot how small this town was. "His real name is Ted. He told his security guard company his name was Dave so he'd know it was them calling on the phone. In case he wanted to pretend he wasn't at home."

Croston laughed. "Yeah, that's pure Ted. What's the address? I'd like to see him again. He was always full of ideas."

"We better stop anyways." Czernik suddenly deflated. "We gotta take care of something. I been holding off, don't let the little girl see, but.."

He rolled up a sleeve, showing one liver spotted hand.

There was a bite mark right on the wrist. Not much blood. It was already turning bright red, with black streaks at the center.

"We, we'll have to do it quietly. Roger, you'll look out for my wife, right?"

"Not so fast." Carla suddenly realized she was actually smiling. She showed them a taser she'd taken off of the dead deputy back at the cells. "I have a cure. It works. It's no fun, but it sure beats killing yourself."
###
And so, in the midst of chaos and horror, humanity finds one spark of hope, along with a tiny spot of family and friendship. Three vehicles of refugees and two houses of besieged suburbanites are going to join forces. What may happen next could be forgotten in the apocalypse, or it could be the beginning of mankind's salvation. But for one woman, who holds a husband she always knew she would find, for a time, there is peace.

Then she sees a savage, battle hardened warrior, a killer with the eyes of a killer, come around the corner of a house and run towards her. With each step, he becomes less of a killer. By the time he drops his weapon, he has stopped being a warrior. When he throws himself into her arms, she holds him tight. For even amidst death and apocalypse,a mother will always know her son. Even in the Twilight Zone.


T.J. McFadden is a published novelist, game designer and former journalist living in Canton, OH with his wife, two sons, five goldfish and firepower that is utterly inadequate for the Zombie Apocalypse (but he’s working on it). A veteran of Desert Shield, Bosnia and Somalia, he is currently also working on finding a literary agent, fixing up their house and writing several novels and a couple of screenplays, which is where the real money is.

[Odd Man Out]

The only thing I can say is VERY well done!

Thank you for a fine story.

[Griffworks]

Nice! Thanks for sharing!

You gonna revisit this world, I hope?

[T.J. McFadden]

Thanks for the kind comments- feedback is what keeps me writing, honestly. Griff, I hope that this is only the start- I've got a lot of plans for this story and some plot twists that I think are fairly unique. The chapter I'm currently working on is kinda, uhm, different- how about "Twilight" meets "Catcher in the Rye"? With zombies. Anyways, the following is the last completed section I have, let me know if you want to see moaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar
Tim

Chapter 5:Faiths
by
T.J. McFadden

I push myself off the floor. It’s swaying back and forth beneath my feet. My head is white hot agony. Warmth is covering the right side of my face.
I see the kevlar helmet I was wearing. It's lying on the floor about six feet from me, split, with a big double-bladed axe stuck in it.
My vision is blurry. I rub the right side of my face. My hand comes away covered in blood. I can feel the gash on my head.
Magnum or Rockford or other TV detectives can take a hit on the head and be fine by the next commercial. In real life, a blow to the head does permanent damage. Words go through my head. Blunt trauma. Embolism. Skull fractures. None of them are good.
Since nothing in the store is rocking back and forth, the rocking motion is all in my head. That's very bad.
Vision focuses, briefly, then it's blurry again as I hear a man bellowing in a powerful voice. "Die, lying priest of your false God! You should have stayed molesting nuns and boys at your church, worshipping your lying roman master!"
Jeez, is this guy Lutheran or what?
No, he's a viking.
Even blurry, he's huge. A coke machine with legs. Wearing chainmail of all things, and a helmet with some kind of shield that guards his eyes too. Swinging a double-bladed axe bigger than the one he hit me with, going after Father Ramos.
Maybe it's the concussion but that little guy is putting on a hell of a show. Saturday chop-sockey martial arts theater had nothing on this. He's ducking and lunging and jumping and I swear once, he even does this incredibly cool move where he crosses the blades above his head and stops the axe inches from his skull. Honest.
Why isn't he cutting at the giant?
Of course. I've only seen him slice zombies. Those already dead. He never strikes the living. He's good, but sooner or later the Viking is gonna score a good one on him.
I pull out my P-38 but I can't aim. They're too close to each other, my vision too bad. I lose the pistol trying to shove it back into the holster. Then the blackness seems to close in around my brain, dragging me down...
Day Five of the Zombie Apocalypse.
1:21 AM
She's clinging to me as she sleeps.
It's been a long time since she clung to me. Years. She looked like hell when she came back. She was scary. She hadn't bathed in days. She smelled.
It felt so damn good to hold her.
We've got a shower rigged up in the basement, hot water and everything. She showered until every drop of hot water was gone, then kept scrubbing herself in the cold water until her skin was red and raw. She had me burn her clothes. Then she gave me royal hell for not having brought some of her clothes with us when we came over here.
That's when I knew she was going to make it.
While she showered, Roger and old Joe Czernik and some guy named Treadwell filled me in on what she'd been through. They seemed to be a little bit in awe of her. That's my Carla.
She wolfed down a meal and would have stayed up if I hadn't poured a couple of vodkas into her. Now she's sleeping like the...
We're going to have to change that saying.
Here in my father's house, in the darkness of my old room, only starlight coming in through the windows, for a moment everything is okay.
Gunshots in the distance. Not machine guns, but firing fast. Panic fire. I try to ignore it. Some group of survivors, like us, standing off an attack.
Except the gunshots don't stop. Their pace slows, they come closer, but the gunshots don't stop.
I slowly untangle myself from Carla. She keeps sleeping, utterly exhausted.
A small girl dressed in an oversized T-shirt comes running in, hops into the bed and clutches Carla. Her name is Samantha. Apparently she’s our new daughter. She hasn’t spoken to me yet but she seems like a nice kid. Carla, still sleeping, throws an arm around her.
"Dad! Mom!" Andrew comes in, holding his carbine. It's like the thing has become a part of him. "Somebody's coming closer. Officer Croston wants you. He's at the door."
"Okay. Stay here and guard your mom."
I slip on my clothes quickly in the dark as Andrew goes to the window, looking out. I'm reminded once more of how dark it becomes with no streetlights, no advertising lights, nothing. It's a balmy summer night. I can see the stars outside in the dark. Did it take the end of the world to make us start noticing the stars again?
Downstairs, it smells incongruously good, even with the odor of burning kerosene from the lantern. A dozen loaves of bread dough are rising in the pans, the aroma of baking bread heavy in the air. Mixed with it is the smell of grilled meat. One of the nearby abandoned houses had a freezer full of meat in the basement. It hadn't turned yet, but we had no place to store it so we had a massive cookout to welcome Croston and his people.
Mrs. Bell comes into the kitchen wearing the frowsiest nightgown I've ever seen and holding her .45. "What's going on? I swear, if those things make my bread fall-"
Croston is waiting. He gives her an odd look, then looks at me. "Ted, they're getting closer. Sounds like mixed survivors and Screamers. It's time to try that headlight idea of yours. I've told everyone to bunker up. We don't want anyone wandering around in the dark."
Dale comes in, his bald head shining in the lantern light, two muskets slung over his shoulder while he carries a third. He hands it to me. ".69 caliber loaded with buck and ball. If anything can stop a Screamer with one shot, it's that."
"Where's the shotgun?"
"We're down to our last six rounds of 20 gauge. Officer Croston, are you sure you don't have-"
"Sorry, we only have 12 gauge." Croston leans out the window and shouts. "Light 'em up!"
All the vehicles have been arranged so they face outwards from our buildings. The three houses and two garages that we are all living in, as well as the trucks and bus. Now, all the headlights are switched on, bright beams flashing out into the darkness. We are in a spot of darkness surrounded by glaring light. The first rule of night fighting: Illuminate your enemy, not yourself.
I step out into the night, cocking the musket as I slide against the brick walls of the house. "Remember, keep your backs to the walls."
Dale jams an 18 inch spike of sharpened steel on the end of his musket. "Fix bayonets!"
Croston grips his radio in one hand, his 10mm in the other. He smiles and shakes his head. "Charge."
We hear the howls of mindless hunger. They still give me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. My heart is hammering in my chest. I cock the heavy old blunderbuss.
Leaping, capering figures, screaming hoarsely, throw themselves out of the dark, hurling themselves at us. Each of them catches a few gunshots. Everyone has their section of the perimeter to watch.
Except the three that come in between two areas. Our shooters hesitate just long enough for the small, hurtling forms to jump into the darkness with us. Croston and I both choose the same one, the biggest one. It comes apart under a barrage of bullets. Dale stops his with a blast from his musket.
The third one leaps at me, a mouthful of bloody teeth gaping at me.
A bullet whings past my head from one of the houses. Someone almost hit me shooting at the screamer. I draw my pistol, flick off the safety, not fast enough-
Dale slams it in the chest with his rifle, throwing it back. Pinning it to the ground with his bayonet. Croston puts two slugs into it.
It's only then that I notice the pigtails of dark hair. Some kind of hair beads. The bloody remains of a "My Little Pony" nightshirt.
She’s about the same size as Samantha.
The rest of the face is unrecognizable.
Croston mutters something, then barks into the radio. "Is there anything else out there?"
"We got people coming in!" No radio, just someone yelling. We run over. A dozen people are lit up in the headlights, some of them staggering. Too fast for shamblers, too slow for screamers.
As I watch, the one on the tag end, farthest from us, turns. There is a glint of metal in the air as two screamers leap from the darkness. They're too close for us to shoot. We'd hit the last man. But blades flash in the light. Both of the screamers go down. Rifles fire from the second floor of both our houses, stopping other pursuit. The person with the blades turns and starts walking towards us.
Croston calls out. "Kill the lights! Keep your guard up but kill the lights!"
We're hoping that with the lights out, the screamers will lose interest. The shamblers have about a five minute attention span, the screamers less. But light and movement definitely draw them in.
I walk over to the newcomers. Women, children. No men. No weapons. Wait, one man. Wearing black, a small man with the build of a welterweight boxer, a thick black brushcut of hair on top of his head. He sits on the ground, exhausted, still holding two long, bloody blades.
I think I know him.
"Father Ramos? Is that you?"
He looks up. I've never seen such exhaustion in someone's face, not even Carla's. "Yes. I am here, my son. Please, come closer. Do I know you?"
"It's Ted Simmons, Father. We go to Saint Benedicts. You might remember Andrew?"
There's the shadow of a smile on that face. "He wanted to learn how to box. Is he...?"
"He's alive, Father." I can see the others are being taken into the buildings and treated. Several have bites. Yesterday, that would have meant certain death or infection.. Carla came back with word that an electric shock can cure the bite of a shambler. So far that's worked. It makes the rest of her story easier to accept.
"Father, what happened?"
He leans back. In a distracted manner, he pulls out some rags and begins cleaning blood and gore from the gleaming blade of one of his machetes. It’s stainless steel. There are deep nicks in the blade, the kind of notches made when you chop through heavy bone.
"When Los Muertes rose, we offered sanctuary. That is the role of the church, is it not? We thought we were well off. St. Benedicts had plenty of room. The school, the spare rooms in the rectory, even the old nunnery. It has been empty for years, but we kept it clean. All with a good strong fence around it. We sheltered hundreds who had no place to go. There was food in the food bank and the soup kitchen. A local store owner donated his entire stock to us before he died. We had enough men and guns to stand off los muertes. But people started fighting.
Some of the parishioners said we should put out anyone who wasn't of the parish, to save our supplies for ourselves. These were good people, people who came to mass every Sunday. Other refugees said they should be in charge and demanded that the Monsignor give them control. Some of them were criminals, bandits, who said they would take over and kill anyone who opposed them.”
His eyes are haunted. Filled with the horror he’s seen. I’ve seen that look a lot in the last couple of days.
“We tried to keep the peace, to stop the fighting. It was foolish. Wicked. There was no need. but there was so much fear. So much panic. Tonight, they began to kill each other. I don't know who started it. The criminals, maybe. I know they killed Father Wagner when he tried to stop the fighting. That was when los muertes must have slipped in. And screamers. The fighting drew them, maybe. With no one watching the fences they were among us so fast... Monsignor Gallagher, he- I do not know. A stroke. His heart was broken, I think. He found them looting the altar. Desecration. We were all so tired. His last order to me was to leave him, to get out with those who might escape. By then, there were so few left…"
He's finished cleaning the first blade and starts on the second. I don't know what to say. I don’t know what to say. Curiosity get the better of me. I tape one of the blades. "Father, I'm pretty sure you didn't get those things at the Seminary."
“One of the parishioners made knives. I told him about when I was a boy in the Phillipines. How I worked in the fields, chopping sugar cane and pineapple. He made these for me. I never thought I would actually need them.” He gives a tired shrug as he looks at the blade. “He is dead now.”
I can see a nifty pair of crossed sheaths slung on the Father’s back too. The Church Militant with a vengeance. He offers me the one he has just finished cleaning. It’s high-grade. I can see the feather-brushes of the blacksmiths hammer in the steel. Well made. I almost slice my finger open when I check the edge. “Father! I thought you said you didn’t think you’d ever need these?”
He shrugs again as he takes it back. “You have a blade, you keep it sharp.”
“Ted.” It’s Roger. I leave Father Ramos.
Roger looks worried. “Ted, this isn’t working. We had everyone up and armed and we still had leakers. We have too much perimeter and not enough people. We don’t have enough supplies either.”
Dale and Mrs. Bell come out of our house, walking over. She’s thrown on a housecoat. It makes an odd contrast with her M-16 and ammo bandolier. “I have food back at my tea shop. The generator there had a three day supply of fuel, so even the refrigerated food should still be good. There’s a restaurant supply warehouse a few blocks away from it with bulk foods there too. If we get into there before anyone else, we’d be good.”
“If the fires don’t get it first. Three or four neighborhoods have gone that way.” Roger is looking up, mentally calculating. I think we all are.
My calculations are different. “There are dozens of places we can loot. People lit off from here in such a panic, just in the nearest houses we’ve been able to scavenge a lot of food, fuel, even some weapons. It’s amazing what people will leave behind. But the farther we go from here, the more likely we’ll be jumped by Z’s. Or this place will be hit while all of our armed people are picking up supplies.”
Roger lowers his voice so only we can hear. “We’re burning through our ammo too. We have to think about that. We weren’t loaded up for a war, Ted.”
“I killed a dozen shamblers with a shovel, back at my house.” I try not to sound boastful but it’s the truth. “Just put yourself where they can’t reach you and have a weapon long enough to hit them. That lets us save our ammo for the screamers.”
“And the looters.” Roger nods. “On day two, we lost more men to looters and rioters than to Z’s.”
Dale speaks up, leaning on his musket like he was giving tips to U.S. Grant himself. “Gentlemen, we need a fortress. It doesn’t have to be a castle. Just a solid building, big enough for us to all get inside, barricaded to keep out the Z’s. That lets a handful of us hold off the shamblers and screamers while the rest of us scavenge for supplies. The classic purpose of a fortress.”
Roger speaks. “I think people tried that on Day One at some of the big department stores. We had riots. They turned into full scale battles at three or four places. Most of them burned down in the fighting.”
I look around us, out to the darkness. Constantly watching for the movement I’ve learned to recognize as Shamblers. Once this neighborhood felt like home. I used to love summer nights, when it was quiet. Will I ever feel that way again? Whether or not I will, this place is no longer safe for my family. Time to find a place that is.
“So the best places are probably gone. We need a place that didn’t get looted in the first rush, with good fields of fire. That narrows it down.”
“East Side Middle School, out on Route 62?” Roger speaks up. “They closed it a couple years ago, but the building is still sound. Good road access. Clear fields of fire around it, good solid brick. I think the school board was storing surplus equipment there.”
Time to go back to school.”
"Hey guys, break out the tazer!” Joe Czernik ambles up, shotgun in one hand, the other covered with a fresh, bloody dressing. “I must be slowing down. One of the damned things slipped through and bit me while I was reloading.”
Roger shakes his head as he pulls out a taser and checks the charge. “Dammit Joe, they are gonna eat you one bite at a time if you don’t learn to stay back.”
He gives Joe a shock.
Joe collapses, gasping. Then his gives a strangled moan of pain, clutching his chest.
Mrs. Bell is the first one on him, checking his pulse. She tears open his shirt, listens at his chest. “He’s having a heart attack! Dammit! He’s going cyanotic! I know CPR but we need a doctor for this!”
Roger looks at me. “The doctors we had were all bitten and turned, first day. That was why we were desperate enough to listen to Freakshow.”
I’m running through options in my head. “Dale, where’s that emergency defibrillator we had for mom?”
“I’m on it!” Dale runs for it. Roger and Mrs Bell take turns on CPR.
We lose Joe in the night.
###
Hot, dry summer breezes flow past us. From the flat roof of the school, we can see for over a mile in some directions. Trees are everywhere, green and beautiful and alive. It seems wrong, somehow, after all the death, all the horror we’ve seen.
We’ve checked out the school we’re standing on. It could be worse. "The building’s solid and no Z’s inside.” Roger is a little out of breath. I’m a lot out of breath. Too much climbing and busting down locked doors. “A lot of junk to throw out. We’ll have to figure out some way to get water up here too.”
“At least it was a quick recon. We’ll be back in time for lunch. Then we get people packing to move over here. Mrs. Bell said we’d have fresh baked bread with lunch.”
Roger takes off his SWAT helmet and scratches his head. “Ted, uh, you know she’s a guy, right?”
I thought that was bugging him. “A Transwoman. That’s the term she used. Hell, I’m still wrapping my head around that one. But she saved my life. She saved my son’s life. Cut her some slack, okay?”
“Okay, just saying. So you’re good for this place?”
I look over at the next couple of buildings, a few hundred yards away. “I’d rather be in there.”
There were two big stores on opposite sides of the highway. The MegaLowMart is a burnt out shell. I can see shamblers moving in the ruins. The closer one, the S-Mart, is intact.
“Claimed on the first day, Ted. Have you ever heard of Reverend Darryl Sexton?”
“Yeah. A whacko preacher, right? His people picketed the funerals of guys who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Said their deaths were God punishing the US and they were burning in hell. If anybody got eaten alive, I hoped it was him.”
“No such luck.” Croston sits down, drinks heavily from his canteen. “Day One, he declared it was the Rapture. He and his whole loony congregation seized that place and killed anyone who tried to get in. We sent a squad car to investigate and they shot it up. We meant to go back, but, well, we had other things to worry about.”
I scan the building. The front windows are all blocked by parked cars and sheets of plywood. No other doors, no windows. The loading dock in back is clear, but I see a big tractor trailer, a refrigerator truck parked to block the back doors. The motor is running. Probably means whatever food that’s inside the reefer truck is still good. “Place looks solid."
“That would be the place to fort up in. Food, clothes, tools, hardware, every day a greenlight special. That was an older place. They built it before the city extended water out this far. I’ll bet they have their own well.”
“That’s probably why he chose it. As a refuge during the zombie apocalypse, it beats the hell out of an abandoned school.” I widen my study. The S-Mart gas station in the parking lot is clear, the windows shot out and a dozen corpses - the non-moving kind- lying around it. That’s when I realize what I’m looking at. “Holy crap. Is he insane?”
Among half a dozen wrecked cars in the big parking lot, hundreds of shamblers are milling around. At least a couple hundred, mostly near the store. “He lets them hang around?”
“They’re part of his defenses. Imagine trying to break into that place while shamblers are swarming all over you.” Roger starts scanning too. “I’ll say this for him, he’s smart. See if it does him any good when he’s burning in hell, the blasphemous bastard. I’m Born Again, but because of nutbags like him, I have to be careful how I testify or people will think I’m some kind of lunatic.”
“You’re Born Again? You were always such a wild man in the Guard. When did you get religion?”
I can actually hear him shrug, with all the gear he’s carrying. “I got cancer a few years back. It made me rethink a lot of things. I got into a prayer group and I asked God into my life.”
“Good for you, Roj. What about the cancer?”
“It went into remission after chemo. I’m leaving it in His hands.”
I scan the top of the store. We have a slight height advantage. “I don’t see anyone up on the roof. They hide that well?”
“They had snipers on the roof before and lots of ammo. We were pretty sure they even had night vision. We noticed that ..hello.”
“What?”
“Check out the big AC unit on the roof, the one closest to us. Left side, by the air vent. There’s our sentry.”
I look. “Uhm, Roger, you notice anything odd about the sentry?”
“Like the fact that somebody chopped off his head?”
“Yeah, stuff like that.”
“He still has his rifle by him. It’ll get rusty if someone doesn’t take it in out of the weather.”
“That would be a shame.”
###
I move through the grass as silently as I can. The hill in front of me blocks a direct view to the roof of the S-Mart, but gives a good view of the parking lot. I speak into the throat mike. “Any movement?”
The earphone in my left ear sputters a bit, then “No movement at all in the building. You go about twenty yards further and most of the shamblers can see you.”
“Who came up with this dumbass plan anyways?”
“That would be you, Ted. Want to back out now?”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Shop smart. Shop S-Mart!”
There are a couple of gunshots behind me. “What’s that?”
“Screamer. It came out of the pumphouse. No sweat, we got it.”
One good thing about working with Croston and his bunch, we have commo now. That makes it less like war and more like zombie extermination. Which suits me just fine.
“Stop!” Father Ramos’s voice freezes me. He moves forward quietly and pushes aside a clump of weeds in the meadow. A shambler, destroyed below the waist, is waiting in the deep grass, silent, ready to bite my ankle. He hacks down with one of his blades, cutting deep into the skull. It stops moving with a hiss.
“Thank you Father. You ready to run?”
“Go on your signal, run on your signal. I understand.”
“Father, seriously, you don’t have to do this. I should be enough for this.”
“One piece of bait is good, two is better.” He’s put on a sweatband, though he’s still wearing his priests black shirt and pants. He’s got to be roasting. Then again, he’s from the PI. He’s used to heat. “Besides, I do not have many parishioners left. I need to guard the ones I have.”
The key to this is to draw away the shamblers without exposing myself to rifle fire from the S-Mart. I check the ground for more crawlers, then run forward, yelling. I stop when I’m just by the hill that blocks me from the view of the S-Mart. There have to be a couple hundred shamblers in sight.
I squeeze the air horn.
“Hey! Lunch is served! Come and get it! Meat on the hoof!”
Father Ramos is beside me, singing some song in Tagalog, striking his blades together with a loud ringing clang.
They notice.
No matter how many times I see it, it still chills me to the bones. Heads turning in perfect unison, some of them bloody, missing eyes, teeth, skin. A second later, they all lurch into motion. Beyond them, other shamblers look my way in a wave that spreads through the crowd. More of them, then all of them begin to move.
I keep yelling, keep drawing them in. Beside me, Father Ramos keeps singing too but I’m getting some nervous looks from him.
When the first ones are twenty yards away, they lunge the way even shamblers can do, for a short distance. I pop the first, then the second. Miss the third. Father Ramos leaps forward nimbly, reaches out with two slashes. One takes off an already-damaged arm. The other goes through the shambler’s neck, taking off his head.
Close enough. “Run!”
We have the attention of over a hundred of the things. The scents of grass, hay and summer weeds fill me with memories of running on these meadows as a child. Then I ran for the sheer joy of running. Now I run with death at my heels, slowing myself because I don’t dare leave it behind. Father Ramos is keeping pace easily. Hell, he’s jogging like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
The hill to my side masks me from view by anyone on top of the S-Mart. What I didn’t anticipate was more shamblers coming up over the hill, guided by noise alone. Flanking me. If they get ahead of me, between me and my goal….
The fence. It’s ahead, a bit ragged, but the chain link fence that once encircled West Side Elementary is still there, with alterations. Behind it wait Roger and a dozen of our people with guns and vehicles. And a ladder.
I run faster.
At the ladder. “Okay father, you go first.”
“No, my son. You go-“
I’m already on the ladder and going. This is not the time to argue.
Father Ramos follows nimbly and we pull the ladder over to our side.
The first Z’s hit the fence a minute later.
I’ve had time to watch them from my house. Facing a mob like this is different. Banks of dead eyes, looking at me, hungry. Accusing. Too many of them are children. We have to wait, as they keep piling against the fence, until the fence posts are groaning, the chain-link bending alarmingly.
Croston makes the call when we have enough. “Hit it!”
The portable generator was already running, a heavy-duty construction model. Somebody clamps the power cables to the fence.
There is a burning noise, like grilling steak. The faces of the dead go blank, losing their rictus of hate and hunger. The steel chain link fence hums. Sparks shoot out at a few spots.
We kill the power. The front ranks collapse, the nanomites that animate them shorted out by the jolt of electricity. A new rank steps up, grips the fence. We turn the power on again.
By the time we’re done, they are an unbroken wall of bodies heaped against the fence. The scent of grilled meat is heavy in the air.
“You gotta be frikkin’ kidding me!”
There’s always an exception.
One corpse in a bloody set of work coveralls, with heavy insulated gloves and protective gear, continues bumping against the fence. His protective gear stops the electricity that fries all the other Z’s.
“There’s one in every crowd. He was probably a power lineman. Probably ran into one of the first shamblers and got bit.”
One of the deputies puts him down with a shot between the eyes.
###
"Okay, stage one completed. Roger, who's on the roof of the school?"
"I have three men with rifles up there. I just checked. No movement, no one checking on our headless sentry. But, uh, Ted, are you sure you want to do this? I can ask for volunteers."
"Nah, my plan, my ass on the line."
I'm lying. Can't tell him the truth. He'd think I'd gone insane.
I'm having fun.
Not dancing around the maypole fun. Last night, when that screamer leapt at me and I realized I wouldn’t reach my pistol in time, part of me was terrified.
Part of me was riding the adrenaline jolt and thinking "Holy fucking shit, what a rush!"
I've known men who became addicted to that rush. Most of them are dead.
The paralyzing fear of the first few days is gone. I know how to beat these things. My skin still crawls looking at them, thinking about their teeth tearing at my body. But it's the normal fear that keeps you alive. Fear that tells you not to touch live electrical wires, not to step into traffic. Not to let a zombie bite you. It comes with a free shot of adrenaline, mainlined into your heart, better than heroin.
I realize I'm smiling. "Just make sure you keep me covered and haul ass when I give the signal. There's no telling what we find inside."
"Or you could find the place wired to explode. Or nerve gas, like that nutcase cult in Japan."
"Which is why it's only me and the good Father going in."
"Okay, at least take a flak vest. We aren't dealing with just zombies anymore. For that matter, take a gas mask."
That, I couldn't argue with. I traded my heavy leather jacket for a flak vest, my old steel helmet for a kevlar. Father Ramos took one of each as well. Since they were in basic black anyways, they went with his ensemble. I put new filters on the gas mask they hand me, no telling how long these filters have been opened.
Father Ramos and I approach from the west side of the store. There are no windows, no way we can be spotted if they aren't using cameras. I’m humping a folding aluminum ladder. We hit the wall and go up the ladder. My heart pounding in my chest every second, waiting to hear some kind of alert. Nothing.
On the roof, the first thing we do is check the dead sentry. His weapon, his ammunition, everything is there. Including a six pack of cola. Blood sprayed all over everything when his head was taken. Only his head is missing.
Okay, that creeps me out. Big time.
Clouds of flies buzz over it all, feeding. Father Ramos studies the body carefully. ""The flies. They do not go on los muertes. Only on the truly dead. Why is that, do you think?"
"Something about the virus repels them? I hear dogs won't get near them either."
We move to the access hatch that had been used to get onto the roof. Dried blood is spattered on the ladder, going down into the dark. I drop down the ladder quickly, not wanting to be exposed. Damn near sprained my ankle. For nothing. The ladder drops into an empty hallway. Office space on the second floor. Most of the doors are still locked. Somewhere a backup generator must be running, because there were a few lights on. After the daylight outside, the interior seems dark as a tomb.
We pass the break room, more offices, restrooms. Stairs going down to the first floor. Everything is spotless.
It’s quiet as the grave.
When we enter the main store area, it starts getting weird.
There are lights in the center, towards Housewares. Some kind of banners flutter from the roof as voices quietly babble. Half a dozen voices at a time. There is the smell of food, snatches of hymns. We approach slowly.
Have I mentioned that at this point, that paralyzing fear of the unknown started coming back?
We can see the banners now. One is of Jesus- the traditional depiction of the light-brown-hair, blue-eyed Jesus who bears no resemblance to what the guy must have actually looked like. The other 12 banners are all of an older, skinny guy with a long, old-testament prophet style beard. Sexton. Looking out from the posters with an expression of love and sincerity on his face.
The weirdness hits us full bore when we pass all the store shelves that had been pushed back to make room for banquet tables and chairs. Glasses and food and pitchers are set up on the tables, with dozens of bodies in the chairs. Children's bodies, women in dresses, men in jeans and work shirts.
Every one has been beheaded.
A thousand ideas go through my head. I want to shoot myself, to gouge out my eyes, anything to not see this anymore. Every time I think I've seen it all....
This isn't fun any more.
Father Ramos crosses himself and begins praying earnestly, tears running down his face as he blesses the body of a child.
Reflex keep my guns up. The heads are gone. Something took them. I really, really want to kill whatever it is that did that.
The voices and music are coming from half a dozen TV's with DVD players plugged in. They are looping testimonials from people who must have been members of the congregation. All about how Reverend Sexton opened their eyes, saved their lives, how great Reverend Sexton's preachings were.
Father Ramos looks up from his prayers. I'd never seen the little dark priest angry before. "This man did not worship God. He thought that he was God."
I watch one testimonial from a huge guy, with a short beard and ponytail, telling how he'd been into paganism. How the Reverend had saved his wife and his children. How the love of a good woman had brought him to salvation, leading him to turn to the True Faith.
I’m trying to see into the shadowy recesses of the store. To see everything except the headless corpses around us. The jolt hits me over and over- the bodies seeming so normal, so reassuring- until I see that severed neck.
"This is insane." Father Ramos studies the bodies. "These people were dead before they were beheaded."
No more. Please. No more craziness. "Why is that Father?"
"I have seen terrorists behead hostages. In the Phillipines, the Moros beheaded a missionary. The blood sprayed out. It was like a fountain. Like the man on the roof. Here, all these bodies, there is almost no blood."
The radio broke what chain of thought I still had. "Ted! This is Roger! One of our people saw something on the other side of the store. You aren't going to believe this!"
Bruce Willis would have had a snappy line. My mind is totally blown. I manage "What?"
"They have an open air garden center that's fenced in. Somebody's built a big pile of lumber and pallets and there's three bodies on top of it. They must have just set it on fire, like a funeral pyre. But scattered beneath them- you ain't gonna believe this, man, this is some seriously freaky shit."
"Are there a bunch of human heads?"
I think I heard him retching over the radio. Vaguely I heard a "Yes."
That’s when I glimpse a big axe flying end-over-end through the air.
Just before it hits me.
###
The bellow from the giant seems to drive railroad spikes into my brain.
Oh. Yeah. Me with a concussion, maybe a skull fracture. A berserker with an axe trying to chop up Father Ramos.
No way can I chase this guy. I try to guesstimate where they're moving, hide myself as best I can, hearing him bellow. I pull an object from a pocket on the flak vest, check it. The ready light is on.
"Hah! You are nimble, Priest! You need to worship a true Warrior's god!"
There's an impact. A suppressed shout of pain as Father Ramos goes flying past me, his machetes ringing off the floor. The big guy is on him in a minute, drawing a no-kidding short sword, putting it to his throat. "Ho, priest! I, Ragnar, salute you! You fought a worthy battle. Reject your false god and join me in the worship of Asatru and the All Father. Or die!"
I think he smiled. "Thank you."
"Then you join me in my faith?"
"No. Thank you for letting me choose. I have always wondered if I would have the courage I have seen in others, to cling to my faith in the face of death. Now, I know. Do what you will and God's mercy be upon your soul."
I jump.
Solid impact into that wall of muscle and chainmail. And a blanket being used as a cloak.
I jam my taser into his neck. His body spasms as the electricity hits him.
"Have a little of Thor's lightning, buddy!" Crazy must be contagious around here because I'm feeling pretty deranged myself. I jam the taser into his neck again and again and it's the funniest thing I've ever done. I'm laughing like a maniac. Maybe that's the concussion too, I don't know.
By the fourth good jolt, he's out on the floor and the taser's batteries are dead. I throw it away and draw my 10mm. I'm seeing in threes right now. I figure I'll put half a clip into the viking in the middle and see how that works. "Okay chuckles, welcome to the 21st century!"
"No! Do not shoot him!" Father Ramos throws himself in front of me.
"Jeez, Father, he just tried to kill you!"
"I forbid you to shoot this man!" The priest is a dark spot in front of me now.
Aw hell. The old altar boy reflexes are kicking in. I slowly put away the pistol. Father Ramos helps me put it back in my holster.
That's when the testimonials stop on all the DVD players. Reverend Sexton is now on each and every one.
"My friends, if you are seeing this, you are no doubt experiencing the horrors of the thousand year rule of the antichrist. I originally believed this to be a plague sent by God to punish sinful mankind. I thought my blessing from the almighty would make me immune. But it has not."
In the video, he holds up a hand wrapped in bloody bandages.
"The taint of the star wormwood is upon me. It is the instrument of the Rapture and we are all being called. To spare the faithful that suffering, I have arranged for all us to have a merciful passing at the same time, so I can lead my faithful to the throne of God and our rightful place. If you would leave behind this suffering world and join us in salvation, drink deep. Not of the wine of sin, which the lying unbelievers would have you poison your body with, but with the true grape juice which our lord made in Gallilee which will bring you to his throne! I will drink it myself as well and then my trusted bodyguards, Nathan Landry and Tom Winger, will behead me so my body will not come back as one of these hell spawned horrors. Be blessed, drink deep and join me!"
Hearing this guy in stereo has me seriously freaked out. Father Ramos pours himself a glass from one of the pitchers of grape kool aid on the tables.
I remember just in time. "Father! Don't drink that!"
"Why?"
"Have you ever heard of Jonestown? Jim Jones? Seems like our Reverend Sexton was following tradition."
He dumps the glass. Then he looks at the Viking.
The viking is wearing jeans. Father Ramos pulls out a wallet on a chain, unclips it. He pulls out a driver's license.
"This is Nathan Landry. He also has a card from something called the Society of Creative Anachronism?"
"That would explain the chainmail. They're a group of people who reenact medieval life. I think I saw him on one of the DVD's. Talking about his wife and kids." I get dizzy for a moment, steady myself. Odd thoughts are bouncing around like ping pong balls in my head. “I knew some SCA types in college. Some of them were a little off, but none of them were full on batshit crazy.”
“We do not know what he has been through.” Father Ramos drops the wallet, grasping one arm. "I think my shoulder is dislocated. Call your friend Officer Croston."
I look for the radio. The earpiece is still in my ear, but the radio was knocked off by the axe. I plug it back it.
"-ever is going on, if you can hear us, Ted, get back by the loading dock! We'll be doing dynamic entry so stand back! Hang on buddy, we're coming in!"
"Roger, roger. Over and done. It's all over in here. Bring in everybody. We'll open the loading dock from the inside." I'm not going to disobey Father Ramos, but Croston and the other cops will have precisely zero patience with battleaxe boy. Let them ventilate him. "If I can't shoot him, then let's get out of here before he wakes up."
Between the two of us, we manage to limp to the loading dock in the warehouse section of the store. There was a big "RZS" spray-painted on it. Father Ramos goes to the door that gives access to the loading bay. I hit the buttons that raise both the outer and inner garage doors.
The inner door starts to rise. A dozen sets of grey-green, bloody hands reach out underneath it.
It turns out "RZS" stands for "Reserve Zombie Storage".
I try to slam the buttons, to reverse them, but a pair of cold hands reaches out and grabs my ankle. Then more hands grip my feet, my legs, pulling me into that room. The fight has taken it all out of me. I have nothing left. I scream and kick.
An arm is thrown around my throat, pulling me, choking me. It's Father Ramos throwing every ounce of his small frame into a tug of war, with me as the rope. I keep kicking. Even as I feel clammy fingers on my leg. Even as I feel the first bite.
I draw my 10mm as I struggle and blast off a clip. By some miracle, I actually hit some of the things without blowing my foot off. Sometime in that process, Father Ramos pulls me free. We try to run. Flopping, pushing, a travesty of walking away, my legs bleeding from multiple bites. Somehow they hadn't hit an artery, but blood streams from a dozen shallow gashes.
They swarm out of the loading docks, moaning their hunger, eager for seconds. I throw my empty pistol at them, struggling, before Father Ramos and I fall over a couple of pallets and slam to the floor. He lands on his bad arm.
It was the only time I heard him scream in pain.
I can hear Croston and his people shooting their way into the loading docks. They aren't going to get to us in time.
Grasping, bloody hands, biting teeth in the mouths of things that used to be human, coming closer. That adrenaline rush? It is gone, used up. All that remains is cold, sick fear.
"HOLD! ALLFATHER, GIVE ME STRENGTH!"
A huge guy in chainmail pitches into them, swinging his axe. He takes one head clean off in his first swing.
"BACK, FIENDS OF NILFHEIM! YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THEM! I SAY THEE NAY!".
Seriously, this guy must have read every "Thor" comic book ever written.
The Father and I are a captive audience, watching as he pitches into them. He's actually pretty good. Bites and clawing hands slide off steel gauntlets and chainmail. I see him kick one zombies chest in and throw one backhanded punch that must have snapped a neck. They try to swarm him and he leaps away to one side, cracking them with the base of the axe handle one second, splitting skulls with the axehead the next.
Turns out Father Ramos carried in a first aid kit. He's rinsing out the bites and scratches on my legs, bandaging them.
My head doesn't hurt anymore.
I suddenly notice the absence of pain in my head. Oh, the bites burn like a sonofabitch. I can feel a burning throughout my body, like my veins are on fire. But I look at some of the blood left on my head. It's stopped flowing. I’m not dizzy.
"Freeze, Conan!" It's Roger, his voice pitched to carry. My vision has cleared. I can see him and a dozen other cops, armed to the teeth and all aiming at Ragnar, who’s standing in the middle of a heap of dismembered zombies. Amazingly, the big guy drops his axe. "Hold, friend! I am an ally!"
I try to shout and I'm amazed that I succeed. It isn't even difficult. "Don't shoot him, Roj! He saved our lives!"
After he almost killed us, granted.....
That's when I realize I'm not seeing in triples anymore.
Roger and his people keep an eye on Ragnar but now they're watching the rest of the store as well. Roger’s in his element. "Split up! Three man teams, sweep the store north to south! Look under every table, behind every door! Shoot any Z's you find, but be careful. There may be survivors hiding out too. If you have any contact, make some noise! Move!"
His people move out through the store. He slings his rifle and breaks out a taser. "Okay Ted, time to get juiced. Those are some fugly looking bites."
"Hang on, Roj." I'm playing a hunch. "Carla said the alien used these things for healing. I think they may be healing something in me too."
"Ted, everybody who's been bitten has turned! No exceptions!"
"Yeah, but Carla walked around for four hours after she got bitten before she started to turn. Give me fifteen more minutes. Unless you can whistle up a brain surgeon and a working ICU."
"Fear not, warrior." Ragnar has cleaned his axe. He throws out his chest. "If the warrior Ted begins to turn, I shall take his head before the shades of Nilfheim possess him."
"Gee, thanks Ragnar, you're a pal." Roger doesn't seem comfortable, but just at that moment his people run into a couple more zombies and he takes off. I hear over the radio. One of the zombies is an old, bearded man, his arms and legs chopped off.
Ragnar broods over his axe, his face set in anger. "Let him rot, trapped in his own foul corpse. The faithless false priest and deceiver, killer of children." .
Father Ramos speaks. "You took his arms and legs. And the heads. Why?"
"Priest, I was called from the feasting halls of the Einherjar, in Valhalla. Called by a mother seeking to save her children, who remembered her Asartu faith too late. I could not save them, but I found their bodies and separated their heads, that they would not be taken over by the shades of the hungry dead. She was a good woman, Inga Landry, a good wife. On top of the pyre, with her two children, the flames will send their spirits to the halls of Frigga and Freya in Valhalla. There they may rest with the souls of other goodwives and children, until Midgard is broken and remade again. Those who failed to protect them, I gave a better fate than they deserved. Their heads burned beneath Inga, so their spirits too will go to the halls of Freya, as their servants. A better fate indeed than that they be trapped inside the bodies of these Nilfheim spawned horrors. Only Sexton did I leave to be taken, after I removed his arms and legs, that he might harm no more innocents."
O-kay. I have to ask. "What about Nathan Landry?"
"A father who did not protect his children and his woman. He is of no consequence. Let him be forgotten."
"Okay, Ragnar, I'd like to talk with Father Ramos for a second." I pull him to one side. He's fingering the edge of his axe, buffing out something. "Father, what are we going to do with this guy?"
The priest shrugs. "He is a good fighter. Perhaps he could show us how to make chainmail. That could be useful."
"Father, he thinks he's possessed by the spirit of a viking warrior who died a thousand years ago! He really believes he's been sent by this Asartu thing."
"Who is to say he is wrong?" Ramos smiles in a thoughtful way. "I believe that, two thousand years ago, a Judean virgin bore the son of God, who became Jesus. I have tried to follow his teachings my whole life. And I have every bit as much evidence for his existence as Ragnar has for his tale of having been sent from Valhalla."
"What?"
"It is a matter of Faith. I have faith that I am right and he is deluded. But he has faith in what he says. If there is one thing the Holy Mother Church has learned in two thousand years, at great cost, it is that we cannot force our faith on others. Faith must come from within, not without. I will attempt to persuade him of the error of his ways, but I cannot force him to have faith in anything."
"But father, what if he starts going berserk again?"
"Oh, then shoot him. He's dangerous with that axe."
My headache is gone. Of course, it's been replaced by a raging fever and my stomach is starting to churn.
"Where is he?" There's a familiar voice.
Carla is looking a little rumpled in her borrowed clothes. She rushes at me and hugs me. "Honey, when they told me you were going in to this place- Oh lord, you're burning up with fever!"
"I'm okay, honey."
She draws back, furious. "And why were you doing this? There are police officers here, men who are ten years younger than you! Why did they make you go in?"
Ramos pipes up. "He volunteered."
Oh darn. Thanks for nothing, Father. Now Carla has a focus for her anger.
"You volunteered? Are you insane? You are a father! What happens to Andrew and Samantha if you get killed while you're playing hero? I go through hell to get back to you and you're risking your life out here? As if it wasn't bad enough having to put up with those years you were in Afghanistan!"
"Honey, you have my word, never again." Seriously, the bites in my legs start to hurt even worse to remind me. "Besides, I was the first guy in. That gives you first dibs on the clothing department in this place."
"What?"
"'Tis only fair, I trow." Ragnar speaks up. "He fought most bravely and defeated me in honorable combat."
Carla spares him a glance, then glares back at me. "If you think those tacky S-Mart fashions are going to make me happy about you risking your life-"
"And the shoe department. You get first crack at the shoe department too."
That actually stops her. For nearly a full second. "Well, shoes are fine, but-"
"And the jewelry department."
She gives me a hard look. "The jewelry department?"
"Anything you want, baby. Won it by right of combat."
She looks at me, more exasparated than angry now. "Oh, what did I expect? And I WILL have first pick of those! And thank you for thinking of me. But I'm still very upset with you."
She's holding me again when Roger comes up, taser at the ready. "Okay Ted, time to ride the lightning. Your fifteen minutes are up."
"He's been bitten and you haven't cured him yet?" Carla is ready to go at it again instantly.
"I think those nanomites cured my concussion, honey. They may actually heal some damage. I had to give them time to work."
"Well I'm your wife and it's my job to take care of you. Besides, I'm still very upset with you." She turns to Roger. "Give me the taser, officer Croston."
"Roger, do not give her that. She's not trained."
He hands her the taser. "I never get between a husband and wife. You two can work this out."
Damned coward.
She's reading the instructions. "Oh, don't be such a baby. I did this to myself with a light socket. You'll be fine."
I do not like the gleam in her eyes when she says that.
###

[DTyra]

I swear you know my wife and she's the model for Carla!!!

[Griffworks]

More story, FTW!

MOARPLZ!

[Nature_Lover]

Thanks for the great story!