Another Zombie Apocalypse Tale: Part 4

Two Weeks and Four Days Since the Apocalypse

The man’s hand tightened around my bicep as he pulled me along with him. We ran toward the buildings on the far side of the square. I glanced over my shoulder. A corpse chased after us, limping hard on its right leg.

“Oh, fu—” My swear was cut off as the bearded man swung me around behind him. He let go of me, then crouched next to a bench and reached underneath it.

I turned back to the corpse, who was gaining on us at a frightening speed. Its right foot was missing and yet it was running faster than most of the dead I’d come across. The other dead followed behind it, streaming out between two squat buildings.

“Why aren’t we going inside?” I asked, voice raised to a panicked squeak. Standing still and not racing away while a horde was coming at me felt like a death wish. We should be running.  

The bearded man stood. “If we go inside, then we’re stuck inside.” He held a machete out to me. I stared at it, my eyes growing wide, not believing that it was real. I’d never seen a machete outside of a movie before.

He grabbed my hand and manually forced my fingers around the hilt. “Aim for the neck,” he said before turning to the horde, wielding a stainless-steel cleaver. The sunlight caught the blade, flashing my eyes, and all I could do was stare.

He’s kidding, right? We can’t take on all these brain hungry dead ourselves.

I was jerked out of my stupor by a spray of blood and gore splattering across my torso. Looking beyond the bearded man, who’d just beheaded the limping corpse, I saw four people racing to meet the horde.

Each person carried a different type of weapon; a stout Indian man with a shovel, a willowy black woman with a baseball bat, a lanky white man with a crowbar, and I swore I saw a tall, broad woman swinging a medieval sword.

A gurgled growl pulled me to attention. I spun on my heel just as cold and grimy fingers dug into my arm. I squealed, but swung the machete hard. The blade connected with the exposed decaying flesh of a woman’s chest.

Part of her ribcage was broken, the bones poked through her skin. Her abdomen was ripped apart, her stomach hanging out, and her intestines trailed behind her. Her empty eye sockets were glaring black holes.

She snapped her teeth at me. Saliva, and who knows what else, sprayed from her mouth. I yanked the machete. The corpse pulled toward me with it. I stumbled back, tripping over a curb. I let out a string of panicked curses as the woman fell atop me. Her teeth scraped the bandages on my shoulder.

Then her weight was gone. An audible thwack and sickening crunch followed her absence, then a dark-skinned hand reached down to me. I grabbed it and allowed the woman to pull me to my feet.

“Get your weapon,” she said with a nod toward the corpse woman, who’s skull had been caved in by the baseball bat that the black woman held casually in her hand.

I braced the corpse with my feet in order to pull the machete from her chest. It made a sucking sound as it came free. My skin crawled and bile burned in my throat. I clamped my teeth together, not wanting to lose the only meal I’d had in a long time.

The next walking dead I faced was a man, he shuffled like an elderly person, but I doubted he was past fifty. He wore a torn D&D shirt. With his lank hair falling out and his skin the color of moldy cottage cheese, determining age was impossible. I fared much better against him. Taking care to aim for the neck as to not get the blade stuck again.

I spun around, breathing heavily through my nose. Blood and sinew dripped from my chin. I took in the scene around me. It was almost hard to tell the dead from the living with how everyone was covered in gore.

The living have weapons, I told myself.

We’d be screwed if the dead ever figured that trick out.

It seemed we were winning the battle. Several bodies littered the ground, some of them with smashed skulls, and some of them without heads.

I stepped over a headless corpse and scanned for my next target, finding it as it lurched up behind the man with the crowbar. He was occupied by a heavyset corpse, the hits with the crowbar just keeping the mass of rotting flesh at bay.

The lurching corpse reached its hand out. I screamed a warning, and launched into a sprint. The dead’s hand grabbed a handful of the living person’s hair and yanked.

I leapt over a body and swung the machete. The blade hissed through the air, and connected with the back of the corpse’s head. The skull split easily, the blade sinking all the way to the collarbone.

I couldn’t say as for what happened next, but someone or something crashed into me, knocking me to my hands and knees. Shock shot up my limbs and ringing filled my ears, but the pain was distant as the scene took place in front of me.

I gaped in horror as the heavyset corpse sat atop the crowbar man, and gripped his head in its hands. I knew what was coming next and I froze.

The shapes in front of me blurred out of focus. Two horrifying thumps followed by a sloppy splat churned my stomach. The chomps and slurps of eating was the sound that overpowered my will to hold on to my breakfast. Saliva flooded my mouth, my chest burned, then I retched.

Even through tear fogged vision, I could see the heavyset corpse from the corner of my eye. It was hunched over its victim, shoving brain tissue into its mouth with grubby hands.

The woman with the sword appeared. Her face pinched with fierceness, she swung the weapon. Effectively decapitating the heavyset corpse feasting on brains. The head bounced when it hit the ground and rolled over to me, stopping as it came into contact with my arm. The glazed eyes stared up at me as maggots crawled out of its nose and ears. Pink brain tissue clung to its lips.

My stomach revolted. Bile made its way up my throat, only for me to choke on it and snort it out my nose. Fresh tears streamed down my face and I crawled away. Needing to find an area of clean ground so I could take a breath of fresh air. Everything was tainted with the stench of death, and splattered with blood and gore.

I wished I wasn’t here. Somehow, it was easier dealing with corpses without other people around to get killed right in front of you. Though, having someone to watch my back was nice.

It would be nicer if I didn’t fail to watch theirs.

Along the fence line, next to a beat to shit Honda Accord, I sat on my knees and stared out at the empty fields, taking deep breaths of the dry, hot breeze. I closed my eyes and drifted back in time to three weeks ago. Well before all this started.

It was a Saturday and I had dragged my sister along for a run. I ran track and field, and was on the cross-country team at school. My sister was not a runner. She whined the entire time. I jabbed at her, smirking and laughing as she complained about her knees hurting.

“This is all you’re good for,” she’d said, giving me a dirty look and slowed to a walk. She let her umber brown and dyed green hair loose from the ponytail she sported for the run. “Have fun running your whole life.”

She was right. She had no idea how right she was. All I could think about right now is running away. I should have run the moment I had the chance, taken a couple of burritos and bolted.

I curled my fingers into the chain link fence. The metal rattled as my arms shook from the effort to try and pull myself to my feet. My muscles refused to provide strength. The wound on my shoulder pulsed with hot pain, urging the beginnings of a headache.

The ground crunched next to me and I jumped, inhaling sharply.

“Sorry.” The bearded man grimaced sheepishly. He crouched next to me, his bloodstained hands picking at weeds growing up the fence. “It was a small breach. They’ve already repaired the fence. They’re just working on reinforcing it now.”

I sniffled. A mistake as something dangling from my nose was breathed in. I winced and wiped at my face, wanting to be free of the gore.

I’ll never be free of it. I looked over at the bearded man, he was covered in blood and sinew. I turned to survey the slaughter scene behind me. The pavement, the living people, the park benches and lamp posts, all of it, splattered and showered in a gruesome red, brown, and black.

“We should get cleaned up,” the man beside me said. He twirled a weed between his forefinger and thumb before tossing it away. He squinted at me for a moment before rising to stand, then he offered me his hand.

I let him help me up. My legs shook and my throat burned from throwing up. An ache cramped in my belly. I hated that feeling, and I hated this place.