Alive:
Carson Ryder: Former
Marine/Former police officer/Has retrograde amnesia/Searching for clues to his past
Damien Albright: Found and
saved Carson/Has no family/Doesn’t seem to care about anything
Kenny Sudrow: Former spa
porter/Happy to be doing something else
Trevor Virden: Former comic
book store owner/His knowledge of useless facts is limitless
Janice Whitfield: Four months
pregnant/Wife of Regis Whitfield
Chuckie Razzano: His only
concern is his Rolex and his hair gel
Chase Crawford: Religious
zealot/Loner/Keeps to himself
Willard Pickman:
Scientist/Worked for the C.D.C./Knows of a cure
Brent Blaze: Mall
survivor/Former police officer
Ally Burton: Mall
survivor/Sister of Eli Burton
Eli Burton: Mall
survivor/Brother of Ally Burton
Vern Sheldon: New ally/Drives
a box truck/Carries a badass flamethrower
Deceased:
Arnold Vesti: Biters got him
Regis Whitfield: Biters got
him
Devin Morris: Strangled in his
sleep
Darren Mays: Shot by Damien
Albright/Claimed that Carson arrested him at one point
IN THE
FLESH
By
Daniel
Skye
PART
SEVEN
DEATH
COMES KNOCKING
Day One.
Trevor had drunk five shots of Southern Comfort and two
Budweiser’s. Then he proceeded to make a complete ass of himself. When he woke
up on Friday, September 13, 2013, with his temples throbbing and red smears on
his collar that he deduced as lipstick, he just assumed these were the signs of
a good night.
The whole evening had been a drunken blur to him. It was
a night he’d scarcely remember, until later that day when Kenny “Squeak” Sudrow
would refresh his memory and remind him just what a fool he had made of
himself.
But before all that, he glanced at the alarm clock and saw
it was eleven. He was supposed to open the comic book store at ten, but he was
pretty sure he had told Devin Morris to open for him that morning.
He didn’t realize how dehydrated he was until he tried to
clear his dry throat and it sounded like a frog was lodged deep in his
esophagus.
Rolling out of bed, he shuffled to the kitchen and poured
himself a glass of water. He sipped the water, then set the glass down on the
faux marble countertop and massaged his throbbing temples with his index and
middle fingers.
From what he recalled, he had drunk twenty-four shots of
tequila and made out with at least three different girls. But this couldn’t be
further from the truth. In reality, he drank five shots and two beers, puked in
a dumpster, dry humped a tree, and reenacted William Shatner’s rendition of
Rocket Man on karaoke. The red smears he mistook for lipstick were actually
ketchup stains from when he conked out at the bar and landed face first in
someone’s basket of French fries.
Kenny had arranged a taxi for Trevor and he managed to
get home safely. Again, all of this was a blur to a hung over Trevor.
He was going to call the store just to make sure Devin
remembered to open, but when he reached for the phone, it started ringing.
“Hello?” Trevor said, lifting the receiver to his ear. He
still had a touchtone phone in his kitchen, cord and all.
“Trevor, it’s mom. I’m calling just to make sure you’re
all right.”
“I’m fine, mom. How are you?”
“Have you turned on the news today?” his mom inquired.
“Who watches the news nowadays?” Trevor answered her
question with a question. “I get all my news from the internet.”
“Well, you better get over to your computer. Some really
strange stuff is happening right now. I just called to make sure you’re safe. I
want you to be extra careful. Please, Trevor.”
“Ok, mom,” he assured her. Trevor was twenty-seven years
old and his mom still managed to make him feel like an undeveloped child that
required constant supervision. Though, he supposed she wouldn’t make such a
fuss over him if she didn’t care with all her heart. They exchanged goodbyes
and they both said I love you before Trevor hung up the phone. Little did
Trevor know, that would be the last time he’d speak to his mother again.
A heavyset Trevor waddled to the fridge and snagged a
bottle of blue Gatorade from the top shelf. It was the cure for his every
hangover. He ripped the cap off with one twist and started quaffing it down.
When he finished the bottle, it was 11:15 and he remembered he was supposed to
call the store to see if Devin opened up on time.
But when he called, nobody answered the line. The phone
just kept ringing and ring. He hung up, dialed Devin’s cell number, and paced
back and forth as far as the phone cord allowed him to as he listened to the
phone ring and ring. Eventually it went to voicemail and he left Devin a brief
message saying, “Where the hell are you? You better be at the shop. I was
counting on you to open today.”
Trevor hung the phone up and waddled back over to the
fridge, scanning the shelves for another Gatorade and finding none. “I should
really just buy them by the case,” Trevor muttered to himself.
He wondered where Devin Morris could be. He considered
the possibility that Devin’s first job had called him into work on short
notice. The comic book store was not Devin’s regular gig. He just filled in for
Trevor from time to time. His main priority was the Best Buy in Levittown, two
blocks from Devin’s house.
That’s how Trevor and Devin first met each other. Trevor
wandered in looking to satisfy his craving for action movies when Devin
suggested The Raid: Redemption.
After that moment, they became instant friends. Trevor
would visit the Best Buy all the time just to get movie suggestions from Devin.
An avid horror movie fan, Devin turned Trevor on to many
great unknown French and Asian titles that blew most American horror movies out
of the water. They’d talk movies for hours, exchange bits of random cinematic
trivia, and have lengthy debates over their favorite or least-favorite titles.
A huge Tarantino fan, Trevor was shocked to learn that
Devin despised Pulp Fiction. They
argued about the film for hours, and when Trevor finally realized he wasn’t
going to win, he threw in the towel.
Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, GoodFellas, Desperado, Fight Club. These were the movies Trevor
grew up on and loved, in addition to all the horror movies he had digested over
the years. He saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and A Nightmare on Elm Street when
he was seven, and had seen the entire Friday
The 13th series before he was ten. But his personal favorite was
Halloween. That film gave him
nightmares for months to come after watching it late one night alone at the age
of six. For months following, he’d check his closet and under his bed every
night just to be sure Michael Myers wasn’t lying in wait for him.
By the time he ate, showered, and got dressed, it was
past noon. His migraine had started to dissipate and he was praising the
inventor of Cool Blue Gatorade. He tried phoning the store one more time. Still
no answer.
He figured it’d be best if he went down there himself and
checked it out. He stepped out the front door, and his mother’s words suddenly
filled his head. He realized he had never gone online to check the news his
mother was so concerned about. But he remembered her warning to be extra
careful.
But outside, everything was calm and tranquil. Birds
chirped and tweeted, the sky was clear and blue, and there wasn’t a person in
sight. Trevor hadn’t the slightest clue what his mother was so concerned about,
but he’d soon find out…
* * *
Day Thirty-Three.
“Fuck
me,” Trevor muttered.
“Vern,
where’s the flamethrower?” Carson asked.
“Shit,
I left it in the cab,” Vern slapped his palm across his head as if to say
stupid me.
“They
must’ve smelled the food,” Pickman surmised.
As the
Biters crept past the lawn, their numbers became visible. It was dark and they
couldn’t see all of them, but Trevor lost count after fifty.
“We
need to find something to barricade the windows,” Brent suggested.
“No
time,” Damien said as the Biters made their way to the front of the face,
pressing their bodies against the glass.
Their
chests bloated and distended. The flesh rotting away from their arms, blackened
skin peeling from their faces. Among this congregation of the dead, Janice
spotted a little girl, the skin missing from the lower half of her face, fully
exposing her jaw and bottom row of her red stained teeth. Janice’s heart sank
and she turned away, clutching at her belly, thinking of the unborn child that
was growing inside of her.
“I don’t think the glass is going to hold them,” Kenny
said, taking a few steps back to prepare himself for the inevitable.
Chase Crawford had locked himself in one of the bathrooms
and had no intentions of coming out until the worst was over.
As the
men scrambled for their weapons and extra rounds of ammunition, the glass
couldn’t hold anymore and as it shattered, the mob of Biters began to spill in
one-by-one.
Carson
Ryder instructed the women, Janice Whitfield and Ally Burton, to seek shelter
upstairs. “Lock yourselves in one of the bedrooms and don’t come out until we
say the coast is clear.”
The
ladies scrambled up the stairs as Damien made sure both of his pistols were
fully loaded. Carson had his pistol tucked into his waistband, and cradled in
his arms was Arnold Vesti’s Remington shotgun. Brent Blaze had his trusty
service revolver, and Trevor and Kenny were both armed with semi-automatic
weapons that held fifteen rounds each.
Vern
was given a piece, which he tucked into his waistband, instead opting to use
the machete that Ryder acquired from their trip to Dorchester.
“Have
you two ever fired guns before?” Damien asked Willard Pickman and Chuckie
Razzano.
“I’ve
never fired a gun before in my life,” Pickman confessed.
“Me
neither,” Razzano said, shrugging his thin shoulders.
Damien
sighed and shook his head. “Just stand behind us and try not to get in our way.
And try not to get bit.”
“Where’s Eli?” Carson asked as he fired the first shot at
an impending Biter. He pumped the mechanism of the shotgun and an empty shell
popped out from the breech.
“Who cares?” Damien replied as he fired the second and
third shots with dual pistols. “As long as the kid stays out of the way. I
don’t think the rich boy is cut out for this sort of thing.”
Trevor, Kenny, and Brent opened fire as the looming
Biters continued to advance. Vern was on the front lines of the battle, slicing
and dicing everything that lurched in his direction. The machete hacked and
slashed away, decapitating the Biters with ease.
When he stopped to rest his arm, he counted about twenty
headless Biters spread out over the house. His arm was getting tired, but as
the Biters continued to crawl and fight their way in, he couldn’t stop. So he
drew the pistol from his waistband and started shooting.
As the Biters multiplied in numbers and spread throughout
the house, the group was forced to split up to try and combat them.
Trevor and Kenny lost sight of one another when Trevor
wandered into the open kitchen and took two Biters down with two deafening
shots. He noticed the backdoor had been left open by someone, and as he rushed
to close it, he found himself cornered by a group of ten Biters that wandered
in from the living room.
He took three of them down with three more shots that
echoed through the house. He squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened.
All he heard was a faint clicking sound. The gun was empty. As he fumbled
through his pockets for a spare clip, the Biters circled around like sharks in
the water.
Just as Trevor retrieved the clip, the little girl that
Janice had spotted with the exposed jawline, sank her teeth into his ankle.
Trevor squealed in pain as he stumbled and fell on his
back. The Biters proceeded all at once, dropping to skinless knees to get a
better grasp on Trevor. He fought for the gun, but with seven Biters tearing,
clawing, ripping, gnawing away, he didn’t stand a chance.
As shots rang throughout the house, an unlikely duo of
Vern Sheldon and Brent Blaze retreated to the dining room, their backs pressed
against the wall.
“Bet you wish you had that flamethrower now,” Brent
murmured.
“This isn’t the time for chitchat,” Vern chided. “But if
you wanna talk, let’s talk about you putting me behind bars.”
“You were a drug dealer, Vern.”
“I was selling a little pot on the side to support my
family. I still held a job, paid my taxes, went to church on Sundays. Why’d you
do it? Was it just to make an example of me?”
“I did what the law required me to do. But since the law
no longer seems to apply, I see no point in holding grudges. I’m sorry, but I
can’t change the past. Friends?” Brent extended his hand and his face expressed
a look that begged for forgiveness.
Just as Vern reached out to accept his hand, a stray
Biter popped up out of nowhere, sinking its black teeth into Brent’s wrist.
“Fuck!” Brent exclaimed. Vern aimed for the head and
blasted a hole right through it. The Biter sank to the floor as Brent applied
pressure to the wound to slow the bleeding.
When the dust was settled and the final shots were fired,
they had killed over seventy-five Biters. But their victory came at a terrible
price. It was Kenny who discovered the mutilated body of his fallen friend in
the kitchen. And it was Kenny who took on the horrible task of putting Trevor out
of his misery by firing a single bullet into his head, to ensure his friend
would never come back as one of those things.
The group gathered in the dining room, where Vern broke
the news about Blaze. “You’ve gotta do the right thing,” Brent implored them. “You’ve
gotta shoot me in the head. I can’t come back as one of those things. I won’t.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Pickman said. “There’s a cure. There’s
still hope for you, even if you turn.”
“I’m not taking my chances on some miracle cure you may
never even reach. Just do it, before I lose my nerve.”
Vern approached Brent and rested one hand on his
shoulder. He extended the other hand for Brent to shake, and Brent accepted. “Friends,”
Vern repeated “And I forgive you. Just as I hope you forgive me.”
Vern raised the pistol the group had supplied him, and
one final shot echoed through the halls.
* * *
Day Thirty-Four.
By morning, the remaining members of the group had moved
on. The house was no longer safe, and they had used up all the food supplies
they had found in the basement. Carson Ryder took the wheel of the van and
Damien Albright, Kenny Sudrow, Chuckie Razzano, and Willard Pickman all piled
in.
Janice Whitfield and Chase Crawford opted to ride in the
back of Vern Sheldon’s box truck, along with Ally and Eli Burton.
They stopped up the road to regroup and strategize. A
vote was held and it was nearly unanimous. The majority voted to pursue the
underground lab in Texas. If there was any hope of survival, it rested in that subterranean
lair.
“Do we even have enough gasoline to make it to Texas?”
Chuckie Razzano asked.
“You can take the Interstate-81 S from New York to Texas,”
Vern stated. “We’d have to pass through Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, and
Arkansas. With all the gas we’ve collected, I figure we’ve got enough to make
it at least half of the way.”
“That doesn’t sound very reassuring to me,” Ally said.
“What other choice do we have?” Ryder asked. But nobody
replied, nobody followed up. The decision had already been made. They were
going to press on. They were going to make it to Texas. Or they were going to
die trying.
To Be Continued with Part
Eight: Helter Shelter
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