Tuesday February 5th,
9:37 AM.
She was kinda hot,
you know- for a dead chick. A slobbering- drooling dead chick that was running
her dead little ass off. I knew that I was safe for the moment, being locked inside of a moving vehicle with
the windows rolled up, and so my morbid curiosity was beginning to get the
better of me, and now- seeing as how she was all alone, I just had to see for
myself where exactly she was running off to. That’s when I spotted the short
pudgy fat guy running HIS ass off right
down the middle of Fordham road- Peckham County, just twenty yards ahead of her. Sure he had twenty
yards on her at least, but she was gaining on him fast. you know- sometimes
when you see that a situation is dire, maybe not for you per se, but you can
tell by watching events unfold that someone is about to have a really fucked up
day. The fat guy- yeah, his morning was
definitely heading downhill fast.
So I pull the truck
in behind her about 150 feet back, and I know that she must be really hungry
because she doesn’t even break stride to look back at me. So I carefully assess fatty’s situation and it
has become readily apparent that I’m his only shot at survival at the moment. I
give the truck a little more gas as I
reach for the Glock nine on the passenger seat.
I pull up beside of her about fifteen feet away as I roll down the window and train the Glock
on her head.
“Hey baby.. Sup?”
“Gaaaaaaaagh!”
She turns toward
me and all it takes is one shot in the head to drop her like a stone. Meanwhile
the big guy- yeah, him, he’s turned onto
Valley Creek road and he’s running towards an open field but still in the
middle of the road.
I pull up beside
of him and he’s wheezing really heavy,
covered in sweat, his face is red as a beet. I leave the window rolled
down he doesn’t even look at me. the poor bastard looks like he’s ready to
drop.
“Morning.”
He doesn’t break
stride to look over at me, I think something akin to shock has set in.
“She isn’t chasing
you anymore man, I put her down about a half a mile back.”
I slow down the
truck as he slowly staggers to an eventual stop. he collapses against my left
front fender trying to catch his breath. I study him for several minutes trying
to determine whether or not he’s been infected.
“Have you been
bitten?”
He looks up at me
shaking his head no.
“Scratched?”
Again no.
“You got a name?”
Still half out of
breath he tells me that his name is Louis Taft and that the woman that was
chasing after him, the woman that wanted so desperately to eat his brain- the
one that I shot in the head.. The zombie that had once been a fully functional
human being- was his daughter.
Sometimes- you can say I’m sorry a million times, and no matter how many times
you can hear those words coming out of your own mouth, it never seems to be
enough. Louis Taft is broken now, much like the rest of the world, or what’s
left of it. I still can’t be certain or not whether he’s been bitten, So I tell
him to climb in the back of the truck and I throw him a box of Granola bars and
a few Terryaki sticks in case he’s hungry. It’ll have to do for now. I turn the
truck down Valley Creek road and head for State route 6. there’s a small little
gas station/ general store not too far from there, we were going to be needing
supplies soon.
In a different Light
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The General store
for the most part was a pretty good haul, the electric is still working, the
gas pumps are still operational so I refill all of the tanks in the truck and
filled a couple of cans that we found in the garage part of the building. While everything is clear we go into the store
and scrounge up a box of canned goods
and some crackers and canned juice, it
was obvious that someone had all but cleaned out whatever they could carry, we
load the rest into the back of the truck and head for the county line. We cross
over into Crooke County at about 5:15 PM, it feels strange not seeing a lot of
cars going down one of the most traveled roads in Cooke County, on State Route
6 we pass a few here and there that had went off the road for whatever reason,
but mostly it just feels like Louis and me are the only two people left in the
world now. six Miles from Vicksburgh we find out different.
There’s a little
country store with one Jeep CJ in the parking lot, I slow the truck to a stop
when we see the ten lumbering figures trying to claw their way into the store. inside
the front window there’s a young girl-
probably a teenager and what I’m guessing is her little brother trapped by the
drooling mob. I pull the S&W Auto Shotgun from behind the seat in the king
cab and open the door the first two see me and start running toward the
truck. I tell Louis that I’ll distract
them while he gets the kids out of the store and brings them back to the truck.
He nods and jumps down behind me. I splatter the first two all over the road
but the rest knows that we are there then. I grab another clip for the S&W and draw
them away from the store there are only six of them left, six snarling –drooling
bugs, I had more than enough rounds to take care of the problem. I cut the last one down as Louis is pulling
the kids from the store. One more straggler comes running around the corner as
they’re headed for the truck.
I take him out
with a shot from the Glock Nine. The
kids make it the the back of the truck just as the next wave of bugs comes
running out from the behind the store, I fire whatever I have left in the the
auto shotgun into the snarling crowd Louis is still about 75 feet from the
truck when he stops in the middle of the street, he looks at me and yells at me
to run, he picks up a club from the side of the road, for a split second I freeze as I see him
running into the crowd of zombies swinging the club violently. they stop their
advance and now all of their attention is on Louis Taft, they swarm over him
like an army of angry ants. I jump into the cab of the truck and slam it into
gear and head in the opposite direction. The two kids in the back hang on for
dear life, and as I look into the rear view mirror I can’t see him anymore, they
have fed. I pause if only for the briefest of moments in my mind to give thanks
to someone that I barely knew but sacrificed himself so that I could escape.
Louis Taft- is a broken man now.. or at least he was.. Now? he’s one of them.
Scratch/A.B.T. Copyright © 2014
