Zombies! Rising from the Dead (9 page)

“NO MOTHER FUCKER!”
he yelled, almost screaming.
“Hang on”
he said in a lower tone,
“just wait,
let’s
make sure it safe”
. Right as he
spoke we both looked up and the person I had believed to be helping the driver reared up from
behind the crumpled door and looked at us. We both sat stunned at what we saw.

This had been no
accident;
the cars had stopped for a reason. Rearing up from behind the
SUV was the cause of the tragic scene. This
thing,
this
abomination
looked at us, leering. It
was a person,
had
been a person once, a long
time ago, now, well now it was;
it was
something
else.
Rick still grasped my arm, as both of us we were caught up in its gaze.

This monstrosity, this demonic abomination parading around in the body of what had
probably once been a proud God-fearing man, how dare it mock God in this
way.
We couldn't
tell much from it, as it was so badly decayed, except to say that by the manner of dress (which
looked to be early seventies) it must have been
e
ntombed for at least thirty or forty years, and
yet somehow here it stood.
Its face was sunken in and visibly rotted, holes where eyes had once been; yet I could
feel it looking at me.

“
How's that possible?”
I thought to myself.

Patches of skin were missing or hanging on by slivers, like a tattered curtain in long
abandoned house. In spots where the skin was cracked, we could see muscle and tendons
attached to bone. Its skin or what was left of it, was pale and leather like. Its scalp only held

patches
of hair here and there, and where hair and skin were absent the bleached white skull
was plainly exposed.

We sat there staring at it, motionless for what felt like an
e
ternity, and it did the same.
Then suddenly it started to move slowly towards us; I was still stunned. Then I felt Rick jerk
me into the vehicle snapping me out of my daze. I fumbled for the door, getting a
grasp on it
I
slammed it shut locking it firmly behind me.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Rick screamed at me.

I put the truck in reverse, still staring as the thing lumbered towards us.

“GO
! GO!
GO!”
Rick yelled as he frantically shook his arm and pointed his finger.

I said nothing, what the hell could I say? I put the truck in drive and start
ed
to maneuver
around the other vehicles.
As we passed we could see what happened to some of the poor souls trapped in
the cars. They must
have been injured in the crash;
those that weren't probably got away on
foot. The ones that couldn't laid there as this “thing” consumed them, helpless to stop it.

We passed one of the passengers, a young
girl,
she couldn't have been more tha
n
twenty.
Laying there
slumped over
on the passenger side. White shorts and a tank top covered in blood, and a gaping
bright red hole in her gut where the creature had feasted on her. She sat there with her head
back, arms off to her side, mouth agape while her lifeless eyes stared up at the roof of the
vehicle;
a macabre sight.

The mind goes to strange places, bad places;
unnatural
places
.
My mind drifted, I
couldn't help but wonder if she was conscious
w
hen the creature came to her. Did she know
what it was or what
was
about happen? What did it feel like as she laid there helpless and felt
its cold lifeless hands tearing at her gut and ripping her open? What was running through her
mind in those final moments as she looked down and saw the creature's head buried in her
innards and feasting on her own organs? Did she watch and look into its cold, dead eyes as it
consumed her? How long did she suffer in its cold, soulless embrace before she finally
succumbed? Chilling thoughts and I tried not to linger on it long.

We drove on past the creature that devoured the poor girl. I could see the creature’s head
crane and its body turn as we went past. It made a halfhearted reach at the truck but moved too
slowly to present any threat.

Driving past the young girl it felt disrespectful to simply leave her there for this creature
to have its way with. I knew that someone som
ewhere might be waiting for her;
waiting in
vain for she would never come. If it had been me I would want to know what had
h
appened to
a loved one, someone I cared about.

That girl had been precious to someone, loved by someone, but all that she was, all that
she
could have been,
all of her potential, now reduced to nothing more than chucks of rotting
meat inside the putrid belly of that unholy, godless thing. Despite of how we felt there was
nothing we could do for her, not even a decent burial, not now, not like this;
her
problems were
now over but ours were just beginning. We drove off doing our best to leave the scene behind

us
.

A few miles down the road we began to calm somewhat. The fog of events that had so
quickly
transpired
began to settle as reality reassert
ed
its grasp. The death grip on the
steering wheel began to loosen as my heart rate slowed and breathing returned to normal, I
took
a deep breath and tried to re-collect myself.

Rick's cell phone had been ringing wildly throughout the whole ordeal, Rick had
dropped the phone when I lost control of the truck and Amanda had gotten disconnected. Rick
snatched it up off the floorboard and answered. I could hear Amanda yelling
fr
antically, but
couldn't tell what she was
saying;
all I could hear was Rick's response.

“It's alright, it’s alright,
we
just ran into...an accident”.
He commented without giving
the details of what had just happened.

“
Okay, okay where are you now?”
He nodded, listening intently.

“Good, now listen to me
. Be
careful and don't stop anywhere you
hear
me? Don't stop
anywhere! When you get to my place get inside and lock the
door. Don't answer it for
anyone
,
don't go outside for anything, just sit tight. I will explain everything when I get there. We'll be
there in about twenty minutes. Just stay put, I love you . . . we'll be there soon.”
Rick hung up, his hands trembling.

No doubt Amanda already knew something of what was happening, but considering the
situation there was going to be
some
degree of explanation required.

“
What’s
going on?”
I asked of the conversation he had just had with Amanda.

“...She's about ten minutes from my place.”
I could see a sense of relief in his eyes as he
spoke.

“Good, good, okay t
hen, let’s get back to town. See
I told you everything was going to
be okay.
Let’s
just try to forget about what we saw back there, and don't say anything to her
about it when we get back”

The remaining twenty minutes back to town seemed as if it took forever. Neither of us
had much to say, what
could
we say? Rick sat quietly just staring out the passenger side
window. Trying to process everything that had happened over these last few hours had left our
minds drained. Only a day ago we were sitting in my backyard grilling, drinking and relaxing
by the pool
, talking about high definition and
watching girls run around in bikini's. We were as

loose
and carefree as anyone could be; but now that sparkling,
s
himmering water seemed so
very far away.

As it stood my objective was to get us ba
ck to Barkley safe and unharmed;
baby steps,
crossing each bridge as I came to it and not thinking much more ahead than that, for each time I
did I found myself overwhelmed.

Many of the houses we passed along the way were
either already boarded up or in the process.
Once beautiful
homes
,
now bastardized by ugly 2x4's and sheets of heavy, knotted plywood. I remembered
on the news
seeing people on the
coast fortifying their homes whe
n getting ready for a hurricane;
the scene here was
not
unlike that in many respects. We continued to listen to the radio,
and
everything we heard indicated
mixed and scattered, it was hard to get a real bead on the situation.

“Hey Rick
;
what about Frankie and Brit?
Have you tried to get a hold of them?”
I asked.