When They Come (11 page)

Kara threw her hand down.

“Listen! The exit is right there. We need to get out while we still can! Who knows how many of those things are out there right now!”, Kara exclaimed.

“Look, they are attracted to noises above all else, Kara. I’m sure we can all find a way to distract them and come out with people that can help us!”, Margie said with hushed urgency.

“Margie, I’m done with you, and I’m done with this. If you’re going to stay in this…this death trap, I won’t holding your hand when you end up like…”

“Don’t you say it!”

“Like, Tommy. He didn’t need to die, but he was stupid, and he got himself killed, and I. Will. Not. End up like that! Do you hear me!”, Kara stormed off onto the exit. A loud crunch filled the air, and Kara looked back with a pale and scared look on her face.

Margie covered her mouth.

Kara screamed.

On the floor was a half of a ghoul greedily holding onto Kara’s leg, chewing a chunk of her calf, missing her muscle and weakened by the blood loss, Kara fell to the ground. The ghoul crawled its way up her body and bit a chunk of her side off and began to chew as it crawled up her torso and clawed her face before it took a bite of her cheek.

Kara screamed in agony as her blood poured out of her. The creature all but ignored Margie as it was focused on Kara’s screaming.

Margie was stunned in terror. The monster bit into Kara’s face again, ripping out one of her eyes, chewing it. A pop filled the air.

“H-h-h-help. M-Margie. I-I can’t see”, Kara made out.

Margie walked over to Kara with her gun in hand. She felt the cold metal in her hand. Kara’s screams were slowly fading away from her mind. She looked at her last companion’s face, rather, what was left of it. Blood, veins, facial muscles were all becoming a blur to her.

Kara reached her arm up and touched Margie’s thigh.

Her words were just a garbled mess at this point.

Margie pointed her gun at Kara’s head. Kara let go.

Bang

Bang

One for Kara and one for the monster that took her away.

Margie put the gun back into her pocket, she made the sign of the cross, and then she briskly walked back up to where the two men were.

She arrived, seeing the one with the shotgun sitting next to his semi-conscious friend.

“Excuse me”, she quietly said.

He aimed the gun at her. “Come to finish with what you’ve started?”, he said. “No.” He lowered the gun. “What do you want though?”

“My name’s Margi…”

He interrupted, “Where’s your friend?”

“She’s gone. Didn’t you hear the gunshots?”

“I was wondering what that was”, he said. “Also, my name is Dave, nice to meet you, Margie. This is Jason. He’s usually more talkative.”

“Look, Dave, we don’t have much time. The noise attracts them and I don’t think we should be here”, Margie said.

“Okay, I’ll get him ready to go. Go into the gun shop over there, grab what you can find, and I’ll follow you”, Dave said.

Margie collected a few loose bullets that seemed to fit her gun and loaded them. She began to shake as she put in the last one. She cried quietly and her mind drifted off. She remembered the faces of those who had been with her before. She remembered Mr. Fontaine, Tommy, Paulie, and now, Kara. They were all gone. Whatever madness swept over the world had swallowed them whole.

She stopped to remember her father through all of this, how he was one of the first and how he was torn limb from limb right in front of her eyes.

The tears poured down her cheek.

“Hey, we’ll get through this”, Dave said to her calmly. He propped Jason against a nearby wall and put his hands on Margie’s shoulders. “We are going to the army base nearby and we are getting out of here. They’ll take us all away and things will be better. Come on, Margie.”

He carefully dried her face with part of his shirt.

She giggled through the tears at seeing the #1 grandpa shirt.

“I knew that shirt would come in handy”, Jason weakly said.

He smiled a little as he returned to the world.

“Oh, God!”, Dave yelled as he hugged his friend. “I was scared I lost you!”

Jason hugged back, “Come on. I needed a little nap. Who’s your friend”, he asked.

“I’m Margie.” She said.

“Well, I’m Jason. It’s nice to meet you. You weren’t the one that clubbed me, right? No, you were in front of me. So, who hit me?”, Jason asked.

“That was…Kara. She didn’t make it”, she said sadly.

“Oh, I’m sorry”, Jason said sadly. “Nice girl, though”, he said, as he rubbed the back of his head. “Good arm, could have used her.”

“Ass”, Dave said.

Jason got up to his feet. He was a little shaky on his legs. Margie caught him.

“Thanks, kiddo. Now come on, we need to get to the base. Dave, I heard you fill in our new friend. We need to hurry.” Jason bumped into the walls on his way out of the gun shop.

“Is he always like that?”, Margie asked.

“Usually, he’s not a morning person, either”, Dave replied.

They met with Jason outside of the shop, who was looking at the two corpses on the floor.

“Come on, we don’t have time for him.” Jason made his way to the nearest exit that he remembered.

“Goodbye, Paulie, and thank you”, Margie whispered at the scene.

The group made their way to the exit. Jason stopped and looked down at Kara, a look of terror frozen on her remaining eye.

“Come on-oh-shit”, Jason stood at the doorway, the parking lot was littered with zombies. Dave’s car was on the other end. It would be too risky to run over to it.

“What do we do?”, Margie asked.

“Should we fight our way out?”, Dave asked.

“Noise, Margie, you said they go to noise, right?”, Jason said excitedly.

“Well, yes, but…”

“Dave, uh, sorry about your car, man.”

“What do you mean?” Dave asked.

Jason fished around his pocket for the car keys. Remembering he had grabbed them a second before they made their way to the mall. Jason looked back.

“Okay, get ready to run. We’re going to head for the road under the highway over there. That should take us to the direction of the evacuation site”, Jason said.

He pressed the PANIC button on the car keys.

Dave’s car began to make one of the most annoying noises known to man…a typical car alarm.

The zombies turned their heads to the source of noise and began to make their way towards it.

“AW, NO! Not the blue rider!”, Dave yelled.

“The blue-what?”, Margie chuckled.

“We can mourn the death of the blue rider in a second, right now we need to…” Jason was interrupted by a loud explosion off in the distance.

A building in the adjacent city had just exploded and was beginning to collapse. The falling building slammed into another building. The noise shook the very ground that the group stood on as they watched in sheer awe.

They could hear the windows exploding, the bricks hitting the floor, some bricks even landed in the mall parking lot.

“Five seconds, Jay. Five. Seconds! That would have been enough noise, right there!”, Dave yelled.

“Well, it didn’t die in vain, and say good-bye, who knows when we’ll see the blue rider again!”, Jason yelled back as he started running towards the road.

Dave and Margie followed quickly.

A Walk to Remember

“What do you think will happen when we get to the evacuation center, Jay?”, Dave asked.

“I don’t know. They’ll take us somewhere far away that not even the zombies will touch. Nebraska, probably”, Jason said with a smile.

“Or maybe South Dakota!”, Margie chimed in.

The group shared a much-needed laugh. The road they traveled was littered with the occasional body, but most of them were not zombies.

“Handiwork of those men from earlier, I guess”, Margie said

“That’s right, you mentioned the men in the truck shooting people”, Dave replied.

“Well, hopefully all that, and…all of this will be gone soon. I hope they take us somewhere that’s nice and green”, Jason calmly said.

“I lost a lot of people since this started. I saw my father die right in front of me, shredded apart by those things. Then the people I was with, I lost them, too”, Margie sadly said.

“Well, you won’t lose us”, Dave said.

“Yeah, we’ve been through a lot, like, paintball. We used to do that when things were normal”, Jason said.

“Paintball. That’s it?”, Margie said. “You guys are funny.”

“Well, no, there were other things, like, rock climbing! That was dangerous”, Dave quickly said.

“Dude, we never went rock climbing”, Jason replied.

“Well, she didn’t know that!”

Margie laughed.

“If that was funny, this whole thing, really, really must have gotten you down”, Dave said.

“Well, yeah…”, Margie said.

An awkward silence filled the air.

“So, what did you do before this, Margie”, Jason asked.

“I volunteered at church. My dad was the pastor there. It wasn’t much, and sometimes I hated it, but, I’d give anything to go back to it now”, she said.

“I was a bank teller. It’s amazing how much of themselves people reveal when you handle their money”, Jason said.

“Oh, anything good? I always had a feeling that there was good in people, even after seeing all…”, Margie was interrupted.

“No, they were bastard covered bastards with bastard filling”, Jason quickly said back. “I always wondered how the world would be like if there weren’t any people around at all, just for a day. Well, be careful what you wish for, I suppose.”

“Look.” Margie pointed to a dimly lit construction sign that read.

“EVAC ONE MI – “

Most of the light bulbs that make up the sign, it’s orange paint was scratched heavily, and it was moved around.

“Oh damn, look at this”, Dave said. He was pointing the sign’s tethering chain, which was snagged on a truck that had driven off the nearby highway.

The group investigated the truck, but saw only a badly decayed body snapping it’s jaws sitting in the driver’s seat.

Jason snickered a bit at the hat it wore. It read, “Keep on Truckin’” .

Margie and Dave looked at him with their eyes wide open.

“What?! It’s delicious irony, ‘cause you know, he can’t truck…any…more. You guys suck, come on!”, Jason snapped.

“Dave, what did you do before all of this?”, Margie asked.

“Well, I used to work with animals. I loved those things, but, I don’t want to think how they’re doing back at the environmental center without me”, Dave said with a hint of sadness in his voice.

“Come to think of it, I’ve barely seen any animals since this whole mess started”, Jason said

“Well, animals are smart, whenever there is a crazy natural disaster, they sense it first and leave. Who knows, this is probably nature thinning out an overpopulating world”, Dave replied.

“Or, God.” Margie said.

“Yes, or God”, Dave sheepishly replied.

“Look. There it is”, Jason said loudly.

“It’s the base! There’s a lot of dust coming out of the ground! That must be one of the helicopters. Come on!”, Dave yelled!

The group ran to the base as fast as they could go. The gates were wide open, almost welcoming them inside.

Margie caught a glimpse of a beautiful white dove flying overhead holding what looked like an olive branch in it’s beak. The sight filled her with hope and dread all at the same time.

“Margie! Come on! They’re gonna leave without us!”, she heard one of the friends yell.

She ran after them.

The End of All Things

The group arrived to their base, and was headed to the path of a helicopter awaiting take off. Inside, they saw many people, some bleeding and looking outside at the group suspiciously. The men in uniform told them to stop and pointed their guns at them.

“GET BACK! WE’RE FULL!”, the soldier yelled. He was slowly boarding the helicopter as he had his gun fixed on Jason and then Dave.

“It’s only the three of us. We came all this way!”, Jason yelled.

“We’re NOT infected!”, Dave yelled.