Another Zombie Apocalypse Tale: Part 10

Day One of the Apocalypse

Three weeks and two days ago…

My lungs felt like they’re going to explode. The hamstring muscle in my right leg was tight and threatened to cancel itself from working, which would ultimately force me to withdraw from the competition, but I pushed through.

“Go, Kamikaze!”

“Full send, Kaze!”

I heard my teammates yelling as I approached the finish line of the 400-meter sprint.

“Feltz is on your tail! Book it, Kamikaze!” This scream was from my coach, Lenora Diaz.  

The runner behind me, a muscular brunette with a perpetual scowl on her face, was the star athlete on an opposing team. Her nickname was Bullet, and she was fast. Crushing the 60, 100, 200 meter back to back, like she was the next Sha'Carri Richardson or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, but with less fantastic hair.

The white line marking the finish flashed underneath me and I slowed to a jog, glancing over my shoulder where Hailee “Bullet” Feltz was scowling, but when we both slowed to a walk, she patted my shoulder and nodded to me before stalking off to her coach.

“Whoa, she acknowledged your existence.” Tammy Diaz, our hurdles and steeplechase fanatic—and coach’s daughter—crushed me in a hug.

I laughed, and rubbed my knuckles atop Tammy’s curls. “She’s a human being, of course she did.”

I looked up to the bleachers and spotted my dad and my sister, Ava. She put her fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that pierced the cheers of the hyped-up crowd. I waved with both hands, grinning.

“Are you saying that you’re more than a human being?” Allen Cutler, our javelin thrower and pole vaulter, raised his hand for a high five. He grinned big and stupid, even with his braces. The elastic ties around each bracket our school colors: yellow, green, and purple.

I slapped my hand to his, matching his grin. “Hell yeah!”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” coach interjected, giving me a scolding glare, but even that couldn’t keep the smile off her face. I had just beaten the competition favorite. She handed me an ice pack and gestured to my leg, then headed off to prep and pester the next runner, Mario Milton. New to the team, great at long distance running. He had the legs for it, lean and long.

Shouts rang out. Confusion and annoyance mingled. We all stood on the bleachers, staring at the mass of humans lumbering across the field.

“What? Is their football team protesting again?” Allen muttered.

We chuckled at his joke, although it was only partly a joke. Last season, the football team did disrupt the meet. Rumor had it none of the players were actually reprimanded because their school was really big with football—what midwest school wasn’t—so it wasn’t far fetched that the team was pulling yet another protesting prank, knowing there wouldn’t be any consequences.

“They really do love living up to their buffoon stereotype,” Tammy said, shaking her head.

“Yeah,” I agreed, the word came out slow as I sat to ice my hamstring and watch the circus known as the football team. More yelling and shouts ensued as the buffoons collided with hurdles and other equipment, knocking it over.

Tammy swore at them. “Ah, come on!”

“I don’t think that’s the football team,” said Allen.

I glanced at him, then at the mob of buffoons. He was right, unless forty year old soccer moms and buisness men were on the football team. There were some teenage boys, but there were also teenage girls, and younger kids. They moved like they were sleepwalking, something my sister used to do as a little kid, limp and zoned out, but also moving with a purpose.

“Maybe the whole town is protesting,” said Tammy, annoyance outweighing any concern. “Typical small brain, corn fed—”

A scream erupted from across the field. A woman wearing a yellow shirt, signifying her volunteer status, fell back from one of the humans in the mob—a woman in a sweatshirt and leggings. The volunteer was holding one of her arms to her chest. The sweatshirt woman lunged for her. The others in the mob followed the sweatshirt woman’s lead, swarming the volunteer as she tried to scramble back and away.

“What the hell?” I stood, dropping the ice pack.

“Oh, my god.” Allen’s voice pitched up with disbelief.

“What are they doing?” Tammy stood on her tip toes as if being taller would make her understand.

Though, I don’t know how anyone could ever make sense of the scene as it played out. If anyone caught on right away to what was happening, they certainly didn’t stick around to help. What most of us saw was a mob attacking a person. Allen and I both jumped down from the bleachers and rushed forward along with several others, screaming at the mob to stop. Some of them stopped, turning their faces toward us.

A man who reached the mob first, stumbled back, halting his rush forward, and decided to try and use his voice instead. The first sign that something wasn’t right. The whole thing wasn’t right, but how could we know how wrong the situation truly was?

A teenage boy, an odd pale sheen to his face, didn’t stop moving toward the man, regardless of his outstretched hand and his demanding tone. The man was someone on the school faculty, someone used to giving orders to kids and begin obeyed, by the sound of his tone. There was no real indication of what the boy was going to do next. The others behind him advanced toward us, the screams of the woman turned to gargles, a prominent distraction.

One second the man was standing, the next, the teenage boy jumps him. They both disappear from my sight as the bodies in front of me block the view. An odd strangled scream sounds before a horrible crack, then another crack, then a squishy thwack. Allen and I don’t make it down to see what happened. The people in front of us turn and begin to run back, faces struck pale with horror. They bump into us, not really paying attention. Allen and I keep close to avoid getting separated.

“What’s going on,” I asked coach as she hurried toward us.

Her usual golden complexion was blanched and green. She didn’t speak as she grabbed both of us and shoved us away from the mob. I repeated my question, a quiver of fear in my voice. I’d never seen coach lose her cool, not even when one of us visibly broke a bone, the skin being pushed out and sometimes broken through by the fracture. Never squeamish with blood, vomit, or other bodily fluids.

Allen repeated my question. Again, Coach Diaz didn’t answer, just kept herding us away. The only thing she said was, “Where’s Tammy?”

Screams rose in a panic behind us, bodies jumbled and bumped as more people began to run past. Allen and I did what we always do in situations similar: concerts, events, festivals. We locked arms, keeping close to each other as to not lose the other in the crowd. This proved difficult as this was a group of scared humans, and we didn’t know what to be scared of. All we knew was a woman and a man were attacked, coach saw it up close, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

“Tammy,” coach screamed, cupping a hand by her mouth to direct the sound.

Looking up, I saw Tammy standing on the bleachers, staring past us with wide, deer-stuck-in-the-headlights-eyes. Her hands covered her mouth. Coach screamed her daughter’s name again. I was bumped into from the side and behind, knocking both Allen and I off balance and we went down. A foot crushed my fingers into the ground. Another heeled me in the back. I pulled myself into a ball, to keep from being stepped on and attempted to stand. The toe of a shoe kicked the side of my head.

I was going to be trampled to death.

Allen’s arm, still locked with mine, tensed as he pulled me to my feet, dragging me forward with the rest of the herd. My vision was like those annoying videos of someone running with their phone, it warbled and refused to focus, and nausea fogged my mind. All I could do was allow Allen to keep holding me up and drag me along like a ball and chain.

The scolding I would get from my sister for being the useless female in the action movie would be inevitable when I told her about this, and we would laugh about it.

Where was my sister, and my dad? I tried to find them, trusting in Allen to keep me upright while I scanned the bleachers. It was a jumbled mess of blurry heads. Everyone trying to leave. Trying to flee. We managed to hug the fence as we made our way up the bleachers, the crowd thinning. Coach was huddled over a body, a whimpering and sobbing Tammy. Her sweet face was pinched and pale, and I followed coach’s hands down to Tammy’s leg, the ankle twisted almost all the way around. The skin already stretched with swelling.

“Hold her while I set this,” coach said once she saw us, her eyes wild yet focused as she tore up a t-shirt into strips. Her jacket was zipped, but I could see her collarbone and bra strap; she was using her own shirt for this. She didn’t know what was going on, but the one thing she did know was how to set a bone, and damn it, that’s what she was going to do.

Allen knelt to help. I hesitated, and stood on my tiptoes to try and find my sister and my dad. They wouldn’t have left without me, but the section they were in was empty. Not only of them, but of all spectators.

Coach yelled at me. I jolted and obeyed, helping Allen keep Tammy from moving while coach set the bone. Tammy made a sound that was akin to the yowl of a cat and a cry of a newborn. How many people had I been around with their broken bones and they made the similar if not the same sound? This cry was terrible, bone jarring; worse than all the others. It drew the warmth from my skin and I wanted to throw up. Tammy’s skin grew clammy and cold under my hands and I wanted to let go, but I didn’t dare. She would never leave me to face this alone.

I turned my attention away from Tammy’s face to coach’s hands as she used the t-shirt strips, a foam finger, and a relay baton for the makeshift splint. Tammy shuddered, but didn’t fight us. She never pushed against our hands, but pushed herself against the metal of the bleachers, as if she could phase through them and disappear from the pain.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Coach Diaz said, deadlifting her daughter and holding her to her chest.

Allen and I led the way, holding onto the fence to steady ourselves as we went down the steps. The mob was still attacking people in swarms. I didn’t know when I started crying, but I was. My throat was constricted and my face was wet and warm.

Open space and sunlight darkened as we entered the covered walkway that went under the scoreboard and the announcer’s platform, leading toward the parking lot and away from the field and the murder mayhem that ensued. Allen and I locked arms again as we merged with a group of people we didn’t recognize. Were they part of the mob?

“No!” Coach’s hoarse yell made Allen and I turn around. She curled her body over Tammy, protecting her from the grasp of a man whose jaw was swollen and one of his eyes bulged from the socket. He persistently reached out at coach with clawing hands. As more of the lumbering mob approached them, more hands reached out, groping, clawing, grasping. Allen and I fought against the flow of panicked traffic, working our way back to Tammy and her mom.

Coach’s head was yanked back, and she screamed a war cry, trying to rip herself free. A young woman shoved her head over coach’s shoulder and sunk her teeth into coach’s neck. Dark blood dripped from the attacker’s mouth as she ripped a chunk of flesh free.

“No,” I half screamed, half sobbed and shoved my way through the last of the crowd. I lost hold of Allen and fell to my knees less than ten feet away. I couldn’t move for what happened next shell shocked me.

A man from the mob clambered on top of coach, gripping her head and smashed her skull repeatedly into the ground. Tammy was pinned beneath them, eyes wide and lifeless, bleeding from her mouth. Or was it her mother’s blood splattered on her face? The person sitting on Coach Diaz began to shove handfuls of coach’s brains into his mouth. Others from the mob joined in, swarming and grabbing handfuls of bloody, pink brain.

“Oh, god. Oh, god,” I heard and felt myself saying.

One of the mob members must have heard me, because they looked right at me and stood. Her mouth red with blood. She was the woman who took a chunk out of coach’s neck. I gaped at her, felt warmth spread in my shorts, and tried to get myself to move. An argument between the two voices in my head, the one of defeat—We’re dead, we’re all dead, what the hell is going on?—and the one of fight—get your ass up and run, don’t be stupid, get up and run.

My sister would be so disappointed in me.

Allen appeared at my side, trying to haul me to my feet. The woman with the bloody mouth lurched closer, stretching out her hands. More from the mob turned to follow her. I could see Tammy’s sweet face beyond their legs. Her eyes were glazed over and empty; dead.

“Camille,” Allen whimpered and lifted my limp body. “Please.” His face was ashen and tear streaked. His mouth was also bloody, and I was scared of him for a moment, until I caught the yellow, purple and green of his braces. Logically, his lip was split open from one of the brackets, and not bloody from eating human.

He said my name again and slapped my face, not hard but enough to jolt me out of my stupor. My legs were like jelly but I managed to get them underneath me with Allen’s help. We gripped each other’s hands like a lifeline and we ran.