Zombies! Rising from the Dead (21 page)

What I had originally estimated to be seventy creatures was now
easily a hundred. They
seemed to come out of nowhere, like ghostly apparitions, always there; but only now choosing
to be seen.
As I dodged and lured the creatures from the truck, I still saddened by the spectacle. These
corpses were dead people, but once they lived and each had their own unique attributes and
individuality, and they retained that individuality even in death. The most heartbreaking thing
was seeing the children. Life happens, but so does death. Death doesn't pick and choose . . . it's
random. It comes to the young just as readily as the old. It doesn't have a heart to feel pity, sadness or empathy. Death is a mindless automaton with one single, all-consuming purpose.

I was reminded of death
’s nature
when I saw the child in the masses of adult dead and it broke my
heart. I noticed her among the ot
hers as they walked towards me, a
small, demure child
standing no more tha
n four feet tall. S
kinny with long, thin brunette hair
; e
ven for the monstrosity she had become she walked softly. Dressed in a little pink dress tied at the hip
with a large white bow; she couldn't have been more than ten years old. So sad, knowing this
had been someone's sweet little angel. Even with the flesh stripped from the right side of her
face down past her neckline I could tell that she had still been a pretty little thing.
She was smaller than the others and she moved briskly, her light foot falls barely audible to
my ears. This poor little girl, whose life was cut so
short,
edged ever closer and I could see into
those cold, milky eyes. She let out a faint wheeze. I h
ad no choice as she approached.
I remembered what Rick had told me so long ago. Regardless of whatever vessel it presented
itself in, there was no sweet, innocent child to be found here. Just another mindless shambling
hunk of meat that wanted to seek out and destroy the living....and it had to be dealt with
accordingly.

I did what I had to
do;
I lifted my gun bringing her young, fragile skull in my sights. With
tears streaming down my face I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the gun
jerked my arm back as her head popped like a cantaloupe, bits of skull and brain going
in every direction. Her small body fell to the ground. She laid there twitching and jerking
spasmodically till her body finally went silent moments later.

That poor child;
in a
roundabout way had just saved my life. Something
dawned on me
that I hadn't known prior to this incident; a way to fight these things. Some things from the old
movies were
ri
ght; if not by science, then by sheer coincidence. A brain was still needed to
facilitate movement and functionality. They weren't
alive
per-say, but they still needed the brain
to coordinate everything. The
brain, just as in the living acts as a nexus and without it it's all
just a jumbled mess of random signals bouncing off one another. Take out the brain and the
body becomes nothing more than a twitching heap of flesh. No brain, no threat simple as that.

I had been so preoccupied with the girl that I lost sight of my surroundings, and so focused
was I on what was in front of me that I wasn't paying attention to what was behind me. I turned
to hobble off and was immediately confronted with a putrid, nasty old man. Unlike the girl he
had long since perished. He opened his mouth and screamed, chunks of rotten flesh hitting my
face as he did. It grabbed me; I struggled to get free but with my bad leg I lost balance and fell

to
the ground. He came lumbering towards me, mouth agape and ready to take a chunk out of
me. I had lost my grip on the gun when I fell, and it was well out of reach. As it stumbled
towards me I kicked at it with my good leg; finally landing a solid kick hitting it squarely in the
gut. It was so decayed that my leg had kicked
through
the damned thing and severed the
emaciated spinal column. It fell to the ground, injured but not out of commission as it
continued to pull itself towards me. We grappled on the
ground,
it lunged and grabbed at me
mercilessly, seemingly unhindered by the massive blow my leg had inflicted. Finally I was able
to break free of its grasp and scramble to my feet. It was a vile thing, with entrails of rancid
organs plopping out of the gaping hole I had inflicted on it. My leg was covered in rancid bits of human meat swimming in thick soup of green, infectious puss.

I got to my feet and recovered my gun and
satchel;
more of those undead things were
closing in. I turned back to hobble around the house and draw them away but they were in front
of me as well; I was quickly becoming surrounded. I raised my gun and quickly took out the
closest . . . a fat, disgusting, morbidly obese female; her body swelled from the heat and
putrid gases building up inside her bloated, heaving mass. Her belly exploded as I shot her in
the gut, showering me in a layer of beefy intestines, the smell was nauseating and I threw up as
I wiped my face of the congealed blood and spit the fine chunks from my mouth. She fell to the
ground temporarily stunned.

“One shot left...
” I thought, before I had to reload.

I wasn't moving fast, but still faster than what was after me. I rounded the house and as the
next
undead monster was approaching.
I lifted my gun and dispatched a clean head shot with
little
problem;
sending it to the ground trembling and shaking.
My timing was perfect even with my injured foot, I was moving just fast enough to
keep
those things interested in me. The bum leg certainly slowed me down, but as I continued to
shake off the injury I realized that it wasn't broken or even fractured, more likely I had simply
strained the muscle; something I could recover from quickly with rest.

I went on with those monsters following closely behind. I stayed well ahead of them, aided
by the momentum of going downhill as I entered the backyard. I came around the side of the
house and reality smacked me in the face as I stepped onto the patio; there sat everything
almost exactly as we had all left it months earlier. Flashes of better times as thoughts of
baseball, swimming and cute girls in
bikinis
filled my head. Good lord, it all seemed so distant
now.

My pace slowed, no longer aided by the force of gravity, but I was still well ahead of my
decrepit pursuers. I rounded to the left of the house and started the ascent. As I had said before
t
he house was built on a hill, with the front of the house at the top and the back of the house at
the bottom. As I started back up hill towards my truck and certain salvation, my leg began to
throb as gravity was now working against me. I minced my lips with each step forward, trying

to
mentally override the pain I felt.

I made it up the hill and could see the truck sitting cozily under the carport.
Only a few steps now... I can do th
i
s
,
I thought to myself.

I came around the corner and walked up the two little steps inside the carport. The creatures
were well behind. I thought I had an easy shot, but I rounded the tailgate only to find that there
were two of them blocking my way, standing in front of the driver side door. On past those two
were even more, not to mention the others that I had lured away were quickly making up for
lost ground. This was it no more time to waste
;
it was a risk, but a calculated one. I could fend
off one or two of them but not fifty
…

I lifted my gun, aimed at their
heads and pulled the trigger.

*
CLICK
*

The sound was disappointing, I was so amped up on adrenaline that after the last shot I had
forgotten to reload,
i
t
was all or nothing
now
.
I ran up to them as quickly as my damaged leg would allow. They reached for me and
groaned in that
eerie displaced
sound, they were hungry and very determined.
I grabbed the
nearest
one and punched it twice in the face, throwing it to the ground. The second grabbed a hold of
me; i
t had a good grip and was scratching
wildly at my arm and neck. I could feel every rotten finger nail on its hand dig
in
to my shoulder
; it hurt like
hell. I grabbed the knife from my back pocket, stabb
ing
it in the forehead. As it stumbled backward I could hear the others
approaching from behind as they had now managed their way onto the carport. No time to stop
!
I opened the truck door and hopped inside, I tried to slam the
door but one of the damned things had gotten a few fingers in the door preventing it from
closing.

“YOUR ABOUT TO LOSE A HAND MOTHER FUCKER!”
I screamed.

I opened the door just enough to push
the hand out of the way, then s
lamming the door with
all my strength
.
I heard a crunch as a few rotten fingers were pinched off by the heavy
door frame with several fingers falling to the floorboard. The door closed with a comforting
click and without a thought I turned and locked it, then
doing the same on the
passenger side and did the same.

I was safe inside at last!

“HAAAAHA!
FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU MOTHER FUCKERS! I made it! I made it!
FUCK YOU!
HAAAHA!!!”
I shouted. I couldn't help but to be happy,
It
was a small hurdle but
a hurdle nonetheless, and I couldn't contain my jubilation.

The creatures started to gather around me, it was a good-sized vehicle, a Ford F-150. They
couldn't get in if they tried, but they weren't going to get the chance. I fumbled for the key and
started the engine. I was relieved when it cranked without a hitch; it had sat idle for almost two
months.
I looked out the window at the rotting corpses, all that stood between me and them was a
few inches of sheet metal and a pane of glass. It was a chilling thought just how little separated
me from them.
I put the truck in drive and looked at them as they clawed hopelessly on the chassis.
FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! EAT THIS YOU BASTARDS!
I
said, peeling
out of the driveway without any regard. The truck bounced back and forth as I