When They Come (6 page)

Kara and Margie made it to the scene.

Kara covered her mouth and gasped at the horrific scene.

Margie stomped on the monster’s head that was still tearing bits of flesh and muscle off of Mr. Fontaine.

“Guys, I’m sorry, but we need to go. All the noise, just, just look!”, Margie said. The stress in her voice was very obvious.

“Oh shit, look, they’re all coming here!”, Kara said, pointing at the throng of ghouls coming at them from between the cars and some more crawling on the ground.

“Daddy”, Tommy uttered.

“Come on ,we need to go. It wasn’t safe here before, but now, hiding isn’t even worth it. They’re coming from ahead of us too. I don’t think we can make it to the gated community now. Fuck, man”, Paulie said. His voice was becoming somber and quiet. He was losing faith.

“Let’s take the next exit off of the highway. It’s our last chance. We can’t possibly make it through here now.” Kara looked at the ghouls slowly marching towards them ahead of them. Turning around, she saw the larger horde slowly descending on them.

“Dad-dy”, Tommy said slowly.

Margie checked her gun. She had five bullets, only five. She looked at the horde and at her gun. She decided to only shoot four if it ever came down to it. The thought made her shake a bit, but she would not want to end up suffering like Mr. Fontaine did.

“GOD! I’M SORRY! I HAVE SINNED! TAKE ME, YOUR FAITHFUL SON WITH YOU UP TO HEAVEN!” Tommy got on his knees and began to scream as loud as he can.

“GOD! YOU HAVE TAKEN EVERYTHING I HAVE FROM ME. PLEASE LORD! TAKE ME WITH YOU! DELIVER ME FROM THIS EVIL!”

“Tommy! No! Shut the fuck up man. You’re bringing more over here!” Paulie was filled with anger. He looked out into the distance and saw more zombies crawling towards them. They came from under the cars, the freshly animated ones. Others were beginning to rise from the corpse heaps on the ground.

“Tommy! Stop it! You’re going to get us all killed”, Kara said. Unable to yell, she pleaded with him to stop.

Tommy tore off his shirt and continued.

“TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS WORLD. OH LORD, TAKE ME AWAY. I AM HERE! I AM A MAN MADE IN YOUR OWN IMAGE! I WANT TO BE TAKEN AWAY FROM THE DEVIL’S ARMY THAT ATE MY FATHER!...”

Margie’s eyes opened wide, she and everyone else were in trouble. She cocked back the hammer of her gun. She turned around quickly.

A freshly risen ghoul, awoken by Tommy’s “prayer” has arisen right behind Margie. She pointed the gun to the monster’s face and fired her gun.

BANG!

Four bullets left.

The creature’s brain matter sprayed everywhere, and with a fresh hole in it’s head, the monster was down and would not be getting back up again.

The group, save Tommy, was walking towards the nearest highway exit faster and faster.

Tommy stood there, screaming to the Lord for help.

Paulie smashed a nearby zombie’s head with a hammer.

“TOMMY! CUT IT OUT! WE NEED TO GO!”

“Tommy! Come on! This isn’t funny anymore! We need to go!”

Paulie and Kara said, respectively.

Margie ran to the group, the ghouls were gathering fast, she ran past the kneeling Tommy. She had her back to Kara and Paulie.

“We need to leave”, Margie said.

“What about Tommy? We can’t just leave him here!”

“Fuck him. Let’s go. He’s not right. We need to leave! That exit doesn’t have too many of them. We can run past them!”, Kara yelled.

“Margie, come on!” Paulie urged her to go. She didn’t know what to do.

“He’s attracting way too much attention. Someone needs to kill him!”

“WHAT?!”, Paulie and Margie said at the same time.

“You heard me, he needs to die. All his yelling just keeps bringing more and more of those things to us. Our lives are in danger!”, Kara said.

“No, it’s not right. We can’t just kill Tommy. We need to get him to come with us”, Paulie almost pleaded.

“Margie, shoot him! Kill him! If you don’t, we all die! Kill him!”, Kara yelled

Margie held up her gun. She had Tommy’s head in her sights. She scanned the area and saw almost two times as many ghouls raised by Tommy’s noise. She turned around to Kara and Paulie. Margie saw a sea of zombies, attracted to the noise, coming in their direction. It would take about 10 minutes for them to meet their destination.

“Margie, no, don’t do it. Come on, get him to come with us! Make it better!”, Paulie stood pleading. Margie didn’t want to look into his eyes.

“No, kill him! He’s trying to kill us all!”

“Don’t shoot him! Margie, please!”

“He needs to die now!”

Margie stood there, now shaking. The devil and angel were on her shoulders, but the choices weren’t cut and dry. She let their voices drown out and she began to pray. The right choice would come to her, but she didn’t have the time.

“God is good, Jesus saves. God is good, Jesus saves.”

She opened her eyes and the choice was clear to her. It wasn’t perfect, but it would buy them all enough time.

Margie lowered her father’s gun.

“We need to leave. Let’s go. Head to that exit. We’ll find a hiding spot.”

Margie ran past Paulie and Kara. She had spared Tommy’s life.

“What? What happened?”, Kara asked as she began to run. Deep down, she was a little disappointed in Margie’s choice.

“I’m with you, Margie!” Paulie was only glad that he didn’t see Tommy die in front of him. He began to run with what was left of the group.

“If I killed him, he would have stopped making noise. We would have lost our distraction. If he lives, he makes a lot of noise, calls those monsters over and he buys us a lot more time. He’s more useful to us dying than he was alive. He would have been excess baggage”, Margie blurted out as she was running.

The group stood quiet for second. Kara and Paulie both agreed that it was the best idea, even though it pained Paulie much more than Kara.

Tommy’s cries could be heard and while they were getting lower and lower, their passion remained the same.

There was a pause in his praying.

A blood curdling scream rang through the air.

It turned into a half sob and scream. It was full of pain.

The group kept running to their unknown destination. Anywhere was better than where they were.

Margie shed a few tears. It was obvious what had happened to Tommy. She hated to think about it, but it was a reality.

The group began to slow down. There was no immediate threat. They all took a chance to look back at the highway. Smoke was rising in their air and they could see a large mass of off the undead moving about. They were still heading to the source of noise that was Tommy.

“What’s that over there?” Kara pointed off into the distance. A large building was in the fog.

“That’s the mall. It’s probably the only thing fun to do in this town.”

“Fun or not, we should probably hold up there for the night. Hopefully it won’t be too bad in there”, Margie said

“Well, mall it is. Let’s go”, Paulie said.

They all began walking to the big, imposing building. Margie looked back one more time.

“Bye, Tommy, and good bye, Mr. Fontaine. Thanks for everything”, Margie said silently to herself.

Creature of Habit

It had already been a few weeks since Matt locked himself in his apartment. He used to hear muffled voices, talking, and even screams of more neighbors being lost to the enemy. He sat in the corner. He had already lost some weight since he began rationing what was left of the food. His apartment stunk as the water he saved in the bathtub slowly became stagnant and rancid.

The noises that were his neighbors became shuffling steps and pained groans. He didn’t know what more to do with himself. He noticed that where voices used to be, the moans and shuffling came from. As a result, Matt hadn’t spoken in some time.

He would sometimes return to his computer, mostly out of force of habit. Sometimes, just for fun, he would click on his inbox and read the old e-mails. It was his only link to what was the outside world. It gave him some comfort and made him a little emotional to read and remember what life was before the world went to shit.

He then blinked and saw the screen was off. It was off for weeks. It was one of very few rituals left that kept his sanity in check.

Matt wiped a single tear from his eye.

“I miss them”, He thought to himself.

He heard his stomach growl a little. The noise startled him a little bit. He made his way to his refrigerator. Knowing that there was not much in it, he carefully weighed the decision to open it or not. There was a small temperature difference in there. Opening it could mean a few hours or even days lost to some freshness.

“Fuck it. If it’s rotten, it’s rotten”, Matt thought.

He opened the ice box.

The cold cuts looked slimy. The yogurt, Matt chuckled to himself; he grabbed a cup and looked out the window.

He turned back to the refrigerator and only saw baking soda and shriveled vegetables. Matt grabbed a carrot and a tomato, he saved the cabbage since it had very little mold on it.

Matt put his “feast” on the counter. He closed the refrigerator.

He took the spoiled yogurt to his window and looked both ways. He spotted some ghouls wandering around by the building. They were in range from this height. He wound his arm back and hurled the rotten yogurt at one of them.

“Bulls-eye”, he thought to himself. He smiled.

He watched the cup splatter and spray its contents all over the monster. It lazily tried to smear the stuff off of itself but soon gave up.

Matt thought about how long it’ll be covered in the goop, maybe until it rains, or forever if it stays inside of a building or something. Whatever, it was all he had left for entertainment.

Matt bit into the carrot. Carrying both vegetables in his hands, he took turns biting into them. They were both dry and spongy. He tried not to think that he could be eating mostly fungus. As long as it sustained him, he didn’t mind. However, he knew that he had maybe one day’s worth of food left with the cabbage and he wouldn’t dare touch the rotten cold cuts. The water wouldn’t last very long anymore, the smell was getting very bad and there was a film on the surface of it.

He slumped in a corner, taking a few bites and thinking of what to do about his situation.

“I have to leave”, he thought.

Matt gagged a little bit when he bit into a bunch of fluff. He knew what the fluff was and he spit it out and started coughing. It made his throat burn. He did what he could to stifle the coughs, but his body demanded it. He was surprised with how loud he sounded. Maybe it was because of how quiet he had been lately.

Matt definitely had to leave now. The noise would surely bring unwanted attention. Maybe it was psychological, but Matt heard some shuffling from higher floors heading to his direction. He got scared. He didn’t know what to do. They were closing in and he needed help. What would he do? Who could he call? What should he do? What should he bring?

Matt’s heart began to hurt. That slowed him down. His years of inactivity were a mixed blessing. His out of shape heart anchored him and caused him to slow down a bit. His thoughts cleared up.

“The shuffling wouldn’t be here for a while”, he thought.

“I have some time to get myself together and leave. I need to get out of this apartment”, Matt said to himself in a soft voice.

Breathing hard, he supported himself by placing his hand on the wall as he slowly made his way into his room to search for something, anything, that could be of use to him.

Going through his closet, he found a hockey stick covered in dust that his parents gave him years and years ago, back when his Dad had hopes of him becoming a pro athlete.

Matt laughed to himself and swung the stick around. The dust that flew off of it brought him back memories of how his mother would scold him for leaving his room so dusty. He fought back tears thinking of how those were now his good memories.

He put on winter boots even though the weather was comfortable outside.

“Everything counts, I guess”, he quietly said to himself.

He made his way to the front door of his apartment. Placing a hand on the door knob, he took in a deep breath and looked at his apartment. He thought how he may never come back again…ever.

Just as he was about to turn the knob, he felt a crisp breeze caress his face. He looked at the window and at his fire escape.

“Wait a second.” He said.

Clutching the stick hard, he walked over the fire escape and took a look around.

He saw a few ghouls milling around the entrance of the building. He laughed a little as he saw the zombie with yogurt splattered on his head.