El Paso Under Attack - 01 (2 page)

Over maniacal screaming I heard Dudley.

“Look at her neck.”

I looked and I saw what I really truly wished I hadn’t just seen. Most of her throat had been torn out. All that remained was a large jagged gash with hanging pieces of skin. Every time she screamed at us, flecks of blood would spray out into the air.

I couldn’t stop watching the little pieces of skin around the gash flop around as she reached between the bars to grab and claw in our direction.

“What the fuck?” said Dudley.

“Let’s call the cops.” I replied.

I didn’t notice the rampant barking that was coming from Merrick until she launched herself at my neighbors.

If I wasn’t convinced that things were seriously fucked up before, I was certainly convinced now. At first, Merrick bit at the flailing arms. Each bite instantly left vicious, dripping wounds of dark blood, but my neighbors didn’t bother to pull their arms away from her attack. They just kept on screaming and reaching for us through the bars.

Then, Merrick latched herself onto the man’s forearm. Biting deeply, she shook her head from side to side creating a terrible gash and crunching the bone with her efforts. Nothing, there still no response from the man.

“Yeah,” said Dudley. “Let’s call the cops.”

We backed up rapidly to the front door. Merrick instantly followed us. I thought this odd in a distant sort of way. Normally, if something caught her attention she was quite difficult to get back into the house. I ran to our home phone and tried to dial 911. The line was dead.

“Use your cell phone.” I told Dudley. “This one’s not working.”

The 911 operator picked up her end of the line after what seemed to me, a long pause. I didn’t hear what was said, because at that moment the neighbors finally broke through my front gate. I heard the cracking of stucco and the twisting of metal from beyond the walls of my home.

Seconds later, they were banging on my front door. I ran forward, jumped over Merrick, and slid the deadbolt home. It was a heavy wooden door. It should hold… for awhile at least. Dudley was off the phone and not looking happy.

“The operator said that it’s happening all over town. She said that we should lock ourselves inside the house and barricade all the windows.”

“What about the cops?” I asked. “Are they coming?”

“Not anytime soon.”

I looked around the house. From where I was standing in the living room, I could see the entire layout. We were in a very bad position. The place was filled with windows and sliding glass doors.

We had no protection. We had nothing that could possibly come even close to barricading all the glass.

Dudley must have realized the same thing. He was staring over at me with the same worried expression that I must have been wearing on my own face.

“They’re gonna get in here aren’t they?”

I didn’t answer him. I was just now realizing that my wife was out there somewhere and I didn’t know if she was safe or not.

I took the stairs to my bedroom two at a time. Merrick was right next to me. I grabbed my cell phone from the night stand and called her number. She didn’t answer. I slapped the phone shut and called again. She still didn’t answer.

I repeated the process over and over until Dudley walked into the room.

“We can’t stay here.” He said. “They are going to get inside the house soon. We gotta leave man.”

“And go where?” I asked.

“I dunno…let’s go to Georgie’s.”

It was a good idea, but first I had to see how bad the neighborhood was. How many of those things were out there.

“I’m going to check the view from upstairs,” I said. “I wanna know how bad it is.”

“I’ll go with you.”

My bedroom has yet another sliding glass door. This one led to the backyard balcony, which stood over the kitchen.

From here, we could see over our back wall and across the open field behind it. They were there unfortunately. Crossing the field, four of them at the moment…easy to identify since their clothes were torn and bloody and they walked in a sluggish sort of shamble.

“Oh fuck,” said Dudley.

“Relax; they’re not headed this way. They’re going to end up farther down the street.”

I climbed up from the balcony to the roof. From here I could see my entire street. I didn’t like the view.

“Oh hell,” I grumbled.

Dudley cursed and climbed up to join me. The previously empty street was now in a state of utter chaos. I had neighbors packing up cars. I had neighbors running from other bloody neighbors. I had neighbors fighting neighbors and last, but by far not the least, I had neighbors eating neighbors.

The screams, both human and inhuman were loud. For a brief moment I thought that I could actually smell the metallic scent of blood in the air.

“They’re dead aren’t they?” asked Dudley.

“I don’t know.”

“That woman out front, with her throat all torn up…there’s no way she could have been alive. Did you see how cloudy her eyes were?”

“Yeah, I saw.”

“We need to go. We need to get out of here.”

I agreed with him. I didn’t voice it, but I most certainly agreed. I climbed back down to the balcony and glanced over to the field behind my house. There were more of them in the field now.

One of them saw me watching and let out one of those gut wrenching screams. The others looked over from him to me almost in unison and began to scream as well.

Lovely.

Dudley was next to me. Merrick had both her front paws on the top of the balcony wall and was watching as well.

“The backyard is all windows,” said Dudley. “We gotta move.”

“Go to your room and grab your backpack,” I ordered in a voice that was much too shrill for my tastes. “Fill it with as much water and food as you can.”

‘Georgie, here we come,’ I thought. I hope your home.

I had a little military backpack that fit quite comfortably on the small of my back. It contained various survival items from the different camping trips I’d taken over the years. I tossed it on the bed and began filling it up with anything I thought I might need.

One thing about me that is not very well known is that I have always had a fondness for weapons. Ever since I was a little boy, I collected various types of knives, swords and axes. I was far from being defenseless. In fact, I was pretty much locked and loaded for anything that came my way. The only things I never spent a lot of time on were guns. In my immediate possession, I had two shotguns and no shells for either of them.

I had everything else in abundance. I grabbed my favorite knife, it’s called a Seal Pup and it’s made by a company called SOG. Probably the best fixed blade I have ever owned and it was definitely coming with me. The nylon sheath has an extra pocket and inside that I kept a Victorinox Swiss Army Ranger knife (my preferred Swiss Army knife). I threw the ensemble on the bed next to the backpack.

I ignored the swords. I didn’t think any of them were for more than show. Instead, I grabbed a small tomahawk and a machete from the closet and threw them on the bed as well.

I was only wearing a white t-shirt and boxers. I threw on some socks and a pair of jeans. I yanked on my boots, my watch, my belt and for whatever reason a pair of nylon gloves that I used for riding.

I threw my day to day pocket knife which was a Special Forces folding tanto made by BokerPlus into my right front pocket, strapped my Seal Pup to my belt on the right hand side, slung the backpack over my shoulder and grabbed the machete in one hand and the tomahawk in the other.

“
I notice that you give a lot of description to the tools and weapons that you used.
”

Hell yeah, these things were a part of not only my survival, but the survival of many others. I guess I kind of have a bit of fondness and pride for them.

“
I get you. It makes perfect sense. What happened next?
”

I ran down the stairs as quick as I could. Dudley met me at the bottom. I handed him the machete and he looked, if only slightly, somewhat relieved to have a weapon.

The first slam on the glass doors on the side of the house sounded out loudly, even over the pounding noises still coming from the front door. The sound was unmistakable. I looked over Dudley’s shoulder and stared through the glass into a cloudy eyed face that was filled with rage.

It screamed at me and was soon joined by another and another. All three of them rammed and slammed against the glass. To my immense relief and great surprise, the glass door actually held, but it also began to crack in the middle.

Dudley, Merrick and I immediately ran to the garage. A flimsy wooden door was all that separated the garage from the house. On the way there I heard the unmistakable sound of the sliding glass door bursting inward with an explosion of glass shards as another one of our unwanted visitors once again slammed into it.

Those things, whatever they were, ran right for us the minute they were inside the house. We barely had enough time to slam shut the weak, wooden door to the garage behind us. It was close. It was way, way too close.

I love my Harley, but sometimes you just need a four wheeled vehicle. I have nothing against sports cars, they just aren’t my thing. I never wanted a truck because anytime someone has to move, they call you. I preferred one vehicle above all others.

Jeep.

Possibly the most functional vehicle ever made. The one I had in the garage was a gift from my father. It was a black 4 cylinder Jeep Wrangler. It currently had the full canvas top on due to the rain, yet the three back windows were off due to the heat.

Dudley and I tossed our backpacks and weapons in the backseat. Merrick hopped inside with Dudley. I jumped into the driver’s seat and hit the button to open the garage door while I turned the ignition.

The flimsy wooden door burst apart, just as I was peeling out of the garage. Those things that were once human ran for us once again and as soon as they grabbed a hold of the vehicle, Merrick began to ravage their hands and fingers. I don’t think they let go due to pain. It seemed like they had no choice in the matter due to the damage done to their hands and fingers.

Before I came to the stop sign at the end of my road, we had ten of them chasing after us.

“Run the stop sign,” shouted Dudley in a voice even shriller than mine was earlier. “Run the fucking stop sign!”

I slowed down enough just to make sure we wouldn’t be hit by another car and then took off again when I was sure the way was clear. Only to come smack dab in the middle of a fucking traffic jam the second I came to a major street.

We had to stop. We had no choice. There were too many abandoned cars littering the street and the cars that were still occupied were now moving at a snail’s pace just trying to weave their way around the empty ones. Horns were blazing and curses were being shouted from windows. Yet, the pace wasn’t about to pick up anytime soon.

Oh hell. I slowly looked into the rearview mirror. The ten pursuing us had gained in number and they weren’t very far behind to boot.

I began to honk my horn furiously. Dudley had his head out the window and was shouting for people to get out of the way.

Our pursuers were getting closer and closer, running furiously towards us. Dudley panicked and grabbed for his machete. He was pulling it out of its nylon sheath when I slapped the Jeep into reverse and peeled out.

I had no idea what I was going to do. I only knew that we couldn’t stay where we were. I guess I was going to ram through them in reverse when I noticed the canal on my left hand side.

There are a lot of farms in the Upper Valley, and these farms are irrigated by the canals coming off of the Rio Grande. These canals litter the entire area and all of them have trails running on top of them that people use for walking, motorcycles, ATV’s and now…Jeeps.

I was still moving backwards when I hit the brakes. The bloody man or thing that was leading our pursuers was only four feet away from the back of the Jeep. He let out a scream just as I jammed the stick in first gear, hit the gas and aimed for the trail on top of the canal.

Thank God for off road vehicles. Thank God for my Jeep. The way ahead was clear.

I stopped when we were a safe distance away and I noticed that the shouting and blazing horns had gone quiet.

Dudley and I watched the group that had been chasing us swarm around the vehicles that were caught in the traffic jam. We saw some of the drivers make a run for it with their wives and children in tow. A few of them may have made it. Many of them didn’t.

We didn’t watch for long. We just wanted to know.

I drove along the trail as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all. It was littered with weeds, bumps and potholes. On one side of the trail was a drop off and on the other was the actual water of the canal.

It took us about ten or fifteen minutes before we reached the Rio Grande. The river was full due to the recent rains and the water was moving fast. I reversed until the back of the Jeep was about two feet from the river. That way I could see if anything was coming our way.

I would have preferred not to stop at all, but we needed to figure out which direction we wanted to take to as we made our way to Georgie’s.

The rains had also made the weeds and grasses grow as well and they climbed high on either side of the Jeep. It didn’t seem like we were in El Paso anymore. It felt more like Africa. It was hot like Africa as well and I realized for the first time that I was drenched in sweat.

Dudley handed me a large water bottle that he had intelligently enough, brought with him. I drank greedily and just sat quietly while my heart settled itself down. I tried to relax by listening to the soft insect noises coming from all around us.

In the far off distance we could hear the occasional scream coming from both humans and…well…whatever those things were.

“All those people,” said Dudley in a soft voice. “We led them to all those people.”

I was feeling just as guilty as he was, but I couldn’t let him know.

“We couldn’t have known that there would be a traffic jam there.” I told him. “We couldn’t have known.”