Death's Little Angels (23 page)

A tall bald soldier, holding a large gun,
cleared his throat loudly giving Jessie a signal to lower her
voice. He smiled slyly at Jessie and openly winked his eye at her
before the other soldier standing right beside him followed in the
flirt pursuit.

“
Jessie… do you know what
is going on here? Look at me,” Drew said as he turned around
displaying his disheveled appearance and blood stained clothing,
“The entire school has literally turned into zombies!”

Drew lowered his voice as he turned his back
to the soldiers.

Jessie yawned and checked her watch. “All I
know is I woke up in the woods. Hitchhiked back to the bar to pick
up my car….” She stopped and began to concentrate as the events
slowly came back to her. “Well, I borrowed about $12.00 to buy a
case of cold yummy juice at Marcy’s Stop & Shop and low and
behold… I walk back to my car and some wild, crazy woman bypasses
me screaming that her five-year-old daughter is chewing her
fifteen-year-old son’s face off.”

“
Did you see it?” Drew
asked.

“
No one paid attention to
that crazy woman. Who knows I had a rough night. I might have been
hallucinating,” Jessie started to stumble towards the
door.

“
You were not dreaming,
Jessie. This is real. Why do you think you are here? The Internet
says these zombies are
Eaters
because its children coming back from the dead.
And, the adults die on the spot if they are bitten unlike the
kids,” Drew tried to explain.

“
Boy, you have been
watching too many of those scary movies. These soldiers will tell
you anything. I was brought here because I was drunk with an
expired license and no insurance. Just like the rest of these
scattered losers,” Jessie waved her hands broadly around, “If there
is something crazy going on out there, don’t be surprised if the
government or mad scientist was involved with some stupid
experiment gone wrong and caused these kids to go ape crazy out
here.”

“
So you know what is going
on?”

“
I wasn’t born yesterday,
boy, remember my mom
your
Mee-maw did serve in the military. I play
stupid,” Jessie flipped her long tresses over her shoulder. “If
there is something going on out there then I’m going back to the
trailer to ride this thing out.” Jessie continued walking until a
soldier stopped her shortly before she exited the door.

“
Ma’am,” the soldier’s
eyes ran a quick analysis of Jessie Jacks and was immediately in
love. He changed his tone of voice and softened his stance. “Err….
Ma’am. We request you be back before 5:00 p.m. Curfew,
Ma’am.”

“
That shouldn’t be a
problem,” Jessie said as she blinked her eyelashes rapidly at the
young soldier.

Drew was disgusted as always and turned away
from the flirting fiasco to see if he could spot Mater. Jessie
strutted her way on out of the Fairgrounds Center causing a lot of
stares and frowns. She sashayed her way through the crowd swinging
her silky golden hair. Drew ran up behind his mother in an effort
to stop her.

“
Jessie, are you going to
ride by Mee-maw’s to see if they are okay?”

Jessie turned her lips into a smirk. “Momma
and the girls will be just fine. Besides, I don’t feel like hearing
momma’s mouth. You can catch a ride to the trailer with me if you
want and help me clean up that pigsty. That place stinks from here
to the moon and back.”

Jessie continued walking with Drew close on
her heels. She hopped into a pale blue Honda that was covered with
dust. Drew opened the squeaky door to the passenger side and
started to slide in until a hand stopped him from closing the
door.

“
I can’t find my mom
anywhere,” Mater cried almost out of breath, “can I catch a ride
with you guys? I can walk to my house. You don’t have to drop me
off.”

Drew looked over at his mom who was fumbling
in the side door for a cigarette.

“
Is it okay if Mater rides
with us? Her house is not that far from ours.”

Jessie nervously lit her cigarette and
inhaled deeply before motioning for Mater to get in. “I know where
Mater lives. Literally in the back yard,” Jessie said to Drew,
“sure, you can come Mater. There is no food at the trailer. Maybe a
can of sardines lying around somewhere. Or maybe you can help this
boy clean up. “

Mater smiled tightly as she looked to Drew
for approval. She quickly hopped into the backseat after Drew
nonchalantly nodded his head and held up the front seat for her to
get in. Jessie started the car after three tries and obnoxious
slurs. She quickly sped out of the crowded lot ignoring the
soldiers beckoning for her to slow down.

They pulled up to the stop sign on Highway
26 where the bus was pulled over to the side of the road. Small
figures still shuffled about on the bus and gave away its secret to
why the windows were blood spattered. Vehicles pulled in and out of
the gas station that Drew and his friends were once in. People were
no longer paying for services but hurriedly looting the store
taking all that their arms could carry.

Jessie made a sour pout as she stood still
at the stop sign. She stared into the bus and tried to figure out
what was going on.

“
What on earth?” She
quietly murmured.

“
That was my bus….” Drew
said looking straight ahead. He swallowed hard. His heart raced
every single time that he inhaled and exhaled knowing that Beetle
was amongst the hungry figures staggering about on the
bus.

“
Oh my God!” Jessie
shouted as she continued to investigate. “Are those
child—“

“
Yes,” Drew interrupted
shaking his head. “It’s like this all over my school
too.”

“
This is nothing compared
to the school, Ms. Jacks,” Mater nervously added. “Marley died
there.”

Jessie turned around and touched Mater’s
knee. She remembered the countless times that Mater and Marley
would bring left over firewood from their house to share with them.
Both sisters even helped Drew with his sisters when she was out
having fun. She sincerely felt bad that Marley was gone.

“
I am truly sorry about
Marley, Mater,” Jessie said as she thought about her own two girls
that she never showed any affection too.

Drew watched as his mother turned around and
observed as the scene at the store unfolded in front of them. The
gas station was littered with cars. People were stealing and
fighting each other over goods that were not even theirs to take. A
bright red umbrella of fluid appeared as a loud gunshot rang out
from a woman. She had shot some thug that was trying to steal a
case of water from her daughter. Screams erupted as people
scattered while some continue to lift items from the store.

“
Lets get out of here,”
Jessie said as she spun onto the highway and headed out of
town.

The Jacks lived about a
mile from the Fairgrounds Center, right outside of the city limits.
Mater lived behind the Jacks on the next road over. She would often
walk through the woods with her sister so that Marley could play
with Drew’s sisters. Mater would use the excuse of
watching Marley
but on
the sly would drool over Drew.

The car came to a
screeching halt as Drew noticed to his right a white car wrapped
around a tree. It seemed as if the car had lost control and hit the
tree head on. The accident must have just occurred because steam
shot high up into the branches and hot liquid sizzled out of the
radiator. The highway was cluttered with luggage, personal items,
and canned goods. It seemed as if the occupants of the car were in
the process of evacuating. A petrified, severed arm lay sprawled
outside the passenger’s window. Mater patted Drew’s back, bringing
his attention to the face impaled into the back window of the car.
It was Austin Hickman, the big linebacker who had helped Drew push
the bus. Drew’s heart raced. Austin was in such a rush to catch a
ride with the coach.
I wonder if he would
have survived if he had stayed with us?
Drew thought.

A pool of fresh blood sat
on the hood of the car. Drew’s eyes followed the trail of vital
fluid up the tree where a pair of legs, accompanied by a pair of
shorts, dangled from high above.
The
coach!
Drew figured as he shook his head
in dismay. A slight squeal escaped the mouth of Jessie prompting
Drew to slowly follow what her gaze was fixated upon.

In the middle of the road two boys who
appeared to be around ten-years-old, shuffled towards the car.
Their appearance looked normal from a distance away. They held
their hands out in front like they were trying to maintain their
balance. Jessie glanced over at the wreckage and then back at the
kids who were closing in on her car.

“
Poor children, they must
have been in that wreck,” Jessie said as she went to open the
door.

“
Jessie don’t!” Drew
yelled as he grabbed his mother’s arms and pointed out the window.
“They are not human. They are
dead
!”

Jessie leaned up closer over the steering
wheel and peered into the windshield closer. As the children
advanced, it was easy to tell that the first boy had a broken neck
as it leaned over to the side at an unnatural angle. The second boy
had huge gashes all over his upper extremities such as the neck,
shoulder, and face. Both boys had the classic look of that dark
gray, leathery skin. They had apparently been dead for awhile
because the blood that oozed from their mouth and wounds looked
like grape jelly.

“
Oh my God! This can’t be
happening! This can’t be happening!” Jessie chanted over and over
as she looked at her cigarette and then flicked it out the window
before quickly rolling it up.

“
Hit them…” Mater said
with a monotone voice from the back seat.

“
What,
what
?” Jessie cried out in
disbelief. “I can’t run over those children! It’s murder!” Her
hands began to shake violently at the steering wheel.

“
If you
don’t
kill them, then
they will kill you,” Mater said with a matter of fact
tone.

“
Mater is right, Jessie.
If you get out of this car then you are zombie leftovers,” Drew
added bringing his attention back to the
Eaters
that continued to make their
way closer to the car.

The first
Eater
opened his mouth
widely and portrayed a tongue that appeared to have been bitten
off. He opened and closed his jaws shut several times over and over
with loud groans escaping from its twisted throat. The sight of the
first
Eater
was
enough to send Jessie over the edge. She pressed her accelerator to
the floor and zoomed right through the two
Eaters.
Their bodies went sailing
through the air like a ball with no direction and then hit the hard
pavement with a loud thump. Jessie looked into her rearview mirror
and witnessed the two
Eaters
scrambled to their feet and press on forward
towards the town of Wiggins like nothing had ever
happened.

“
They should be dead. I
hit them. They should be
dead
!” Jessie yelled as she fumbled
for another cigarette. She noticed that her cigarette carton was
empty and threw it into the back seat.

Jessie sharply turned down the road where
her trailer and mother’s house was located. She shocked Drew when
she flew past the trailer and onto her mother’s house. Drew watched
as his mother began to cry and talk to herself.

“
Oh, I hope momma and the
girls are okay. What have I done? Oh, what have I done?” Jessie
continued to cry as she swerved into the yard where her mother’s
two story home sat comfortably on three acres of land.

They quickly exited the
car and slowly walked towards the house. From the outside, the
house looked normal but it was not as lively as Drew remembered
it.
It is to quiet,
Drew thought. Mater pulled Drew aside as Jessie went on
towards the house. A flood of gunshots, which hailed from the
direction of Wiggins, came from high powered weapons. The shots
went off for at least ten minutes.

“
What on earth was that?”
Mater wondered out loud.

“
I don’t know but I don’t
like the sound of it,” Drew wearily said as he glanced back towards
Wiggins.

“
What I was going to tell
you before we heard all of those bullets was, I am going to head
back down the road and cut through the woods to the house. I got to
see if mom is at the house waiting for me.”

“
Do you think it is okay
to go by yourself? I can go with you if you hold on a minute,” Drew
asked.

He watched as desperation crossed Mater’s
face. Her big brown eyes blinked fervently. She pushed her large
French braid behind her shoulders.

“
I have been waiting all
day Drew. I need to find my mom. She has to know about Marley,
about everything and that I am okay. If I don’t come back in
fifteen minutes, then either an
Eater
got me or I went on with my
mom.”

Drew looked Mater over before embracing her
tightly. He pulled back from the hug and stared into those eyes
that desperately wanted him to accept her. Drew grabbed Maters
hands and squeezed them tightly.
“I will see you in fifteen minutes…” He whispered as Mater broke
away.