Kent for a Day, Fool for an Unlifetime

Things were starting to come together, and not a moment too soon.

There hadn't been time yet to complete a head count, but there had to be more than a hundred people bustling about the compound. Kent stood atop the easement belonging to the lumber distribution facility that occupied the space directly across from the Gerber factory he was once employed by, yet still worked at. A strange situation to be sure, but the work that was now being done there was far more important than any task undertaken there previously.

Yesterday, “survival gear” and “gear for survival” would have meant the same thing to him, but not any more. It was easy to see what products fit the new and valid description of survival gear. One needed only to look at which crates sat empty and which hadn't been opened at all.

Kent's eyes caught some movement to his right, prompting him to snap his left hand upward while pressing down with his index finger.

“Got two moaners over in G2.”

As his finger relaxed, the small two way radio in his hand cried with static for a moment before closing the transmission with a click. “Roger that,” the box squawked, “red intercepting.” Kent kept his eyes focused on the intruders as they lumbered towards the center of activity he hovered over. The rumble of an eight cylinder engine being given a healthy amount of gas ricocheted up and out of the alley between the two buildings to his South as a deep red colored Ford pickup truck shot out onto the main roadway. A medieval looking steel contraption thrust from the front of the vehicle and was stained a color which almost matched the truck's paint. The device was once a small snow plow, but it now resembled what would happen if a bus load of swords was dropped into a chicken coop.

The zombie's lack of survival instinct was obvious as they paid no heed to the vehicle roaring their way. Lining up the perfect shot took very little adjustment for the driver, and the undead were scooped up and impaled swiftly. Jaws still snapping at the man piloting the craft, the creatures struggled to break free of the razor wire that was tearing their muscles into useless bloody chunks.

The driver slung his head part of the way out of the window and bellowed, “hit it!”
A slender teenager who had been seated in the bed of the truck popped up and snatched the bright yellow rubber grip at the end of a long rod that jutted upward from the back of the truck. With a sharp tug, a winch groaned to life and began to quickly draw in the length of urethane coated cable which ran over the top of the cab and connected to the wire mesh where the zombies were ensnared. The grinding cries of metal on metal were sharper on the ears than the wire's tiny blades were on the ghouls as it constricted around them. Flesh, sinew and bone were shredded, leaving hunks of diced human and buckets of blood in a wide trail behind the pickup, as if some Lovecraftian slug had slithered its way down the street.

Four hours, Kent thought to himself. These men had four hours to get that truck ready, and they were able to construct that... thing. He couldn't help but smile. If necessity is the mother of invention, desperation gives birth to something much more profound.

“Hey, Kent?”

While not actually a question, the soft request that floated up from his feet certainly sounded like one.

“I think I worked out how to secure the walkways against the expected mob's ebb and flow.”

Seated on the roof next to him was a young man hunched down a bit too close to the screen of a rather expensive looking laptop. His crisp white dress shirt still displayed the lightly starched creases along the sleeves placed there by a dry cleaning shop which was most likely abandoned by now. The bright white was broken up by broad splatters of burgundy dried blood, which actually looked quite good next to the dark chocolate brown of his skin. On the laptop's screen was a web of intersecting lines and figures, which were mostly indecipherable to Kent. The young man wasn't on Kent's list of invitations to the compound, but he was proving to be a critical asset in the construction. Michael was his name, and he had the sort of demeanor that made it seem all too appropriate to use his whole name, rather than truncating it to something like “Mike.” He had arrived carrying his laptop and a crimson coated fire axe not long after they began securing these buildings. Apparently, he followed his college flame to the Northwest with his freshly printed structural engineering degree in hand. While the relationship left him with nothing but an empty apartment to leave his office for, his training was providing him with plenty of new friends.

“If our inventory of the available materials is accurate, we should have the resources necessary to begin constructing the preliminary support structure to allow movement between structures, prior to the final framework being assembled,” Michael was just getting warmed up. Kent squinted slightly as if his eyelashes could somehow decode the drawings that were being explained to him. It wasn't working.

With an uncharacteristically soft press against the overly engrossed man's shoulder, Kent interrupted: “Michael, I believe that you know what you're doing, so I need you to start instructing the crew on what to do, and quickly.” The radio cut him off with a yelp that was partially muffled by the palm of his hand. Once again, Kent brought the box up near his head, “go ahead.”

“The head count is finished, and it looks like we're doing better than expected. But... there's something you need to know.” No closing static jumped from the radio, so Kent knew there was more to be said, even as the silent moment dragged out to the end of his patience.

“Sharon's not here yet.”
Ssshhh-cluck. The connection snapped closed.

Kent was squinting again. This time, it was as his teeth ground down upon each other and his head turned slowly to face the East. His gaze bore down on a destination past these warehouses and parking lots, underneath the highway, through treetops and power lines and two story homes. A solid three mile long staring contest against a sandy colored split-level brick target.

Home.

Smucker's Raspberry Preserves

I awake still lying on the rotten floor of the tree house shrouded in an early morning fog. My arm still throbbing with raccoon bite. The soft moans of the undead below did not go away while I was dreaming of soft Mexican beaches.

Here, the dead do not rest.

Today is the day I will need to get out of here, “here” being this tree house, this situation, this life perhaps? My stomach growls in anger. My thirst is almost unbearable. Void of modesty I drop trow and relieve myself through the cracks in the tree house floor. Any live person who might show up at this moment and happen to see me peeing would bless me with welcome embarrassment. The droplets of urine land on the little boy whose carcass stands swaying and clawing at the tree trunk.

I sit Indian-style on the floorboards for about an hour and near hysteria once again, I put one hand over my eyes as I audibly pray to God for help through cracked sobs. With the other hand I unwittingly grasp for the edge of the tree house floor. The gray dry rotted wood gave up almost immediately and I pulled and jerked the broken off piece and held it in front of my surprised face. A two-footer, sharp on one end and with just a bit of life left in the middle to provide strength. This was the answer. Halting my sobs and prayers, I got up and onto my knees and began madly yanking at the floorboard strips tearing up splinters and stubbing my thumb on a rusty nail. I was clawing for my own salvation. Dead wood for dead heads.

By the time the fog burned off and the morning sun was nearly blinding I had a good-sized pile of spikes for which I was sorting by size and strength. The larger men zombies would need to be taken out first. I gingerly lowered myself, hands sweating, on the shaky wooden tree house ladder with the largest of the makeshift spears. The undead farmer in his overalls moaned loudly and reached his rotting limbs up to reach me. And I’m just barely out of his reach as my hands shake with adrenalin – one clinging to the tree ladder and the other raised above my target. I bring it down with a powerful grunt and plant it through the top of the semi-soft cranium with a "flump". Farmer drops to his knees and then falls over, face down into the soft green grass. The other three are oblivious totheir comrade’s termination and stumble around his second-time corpse, tripping here and there.

With a slightly renewed confidence that this would work, I bared my teeth and hissed. "That's it. Get over here, you fuckers!"

I pull out another stake and took out Neighbor man likewise. The little boy, however, got it through the eye. It went deep enough to short circuit him and disgusting, smelly aqueous humor dripped out of his socket before he hit the ground. That’s all that mattered, his ending. And then the little girl was spiked through her blonde pony-tailed head, no problem. She didn't scream. The blood wasn’t even really blood but clotted and congealed like Smuckers Raspberry Preserves. I should have been throwing up by now. Is this what is called desensitizing? Or just pure survival?

I gratefully jumped to the ground, keeping low and hunched over where all four bodies lay scattered, keeping an eye out for any movement. In a moment of dramatic victory and going against my better instincts I felt a rage well up within me. I bent down to the ground and dipped two fingers into a pool of red ooze and then traced a cross on my forehead before breaking into a sprint toward my parents' house.

I think I left myself in that tree house. This was now Me [Version 2.0].

Redenbacher Blues

As a man who grew up in another world, a world where the dead stayed dead and where women and children didn't run through the countryside pursued by ravenous fetid corpses, I have had occasion to wonder what kind of a man I was. Certain other generations were not so much plagued by this question. They were plagued instead with war and famine and challenges of the mind, body, and spirit which I haven't known, and while I am dutifully grateful for the luxuries of being a product of the late twentieth century, I was never able to shake the nagging doubt. I heard stories, read novels, watched movies, all crowded with heroism and altruism, and I wondered, "What kind of man am I?" Would I stand tall in the face of danger, sacrifice myself; would I risk everything for a loved one? A stranger?

I was beginning to find the answers to my question.

When Colleen hit the grain, she and Finn sank with astonishing speed. The grain seemed to open for them, enfold them in countless tiny arms and simply pulled them in.

Another shot, this one so close to my left hand I felt the concrete shatter into stone shrapnel, slicing the top of my hand wide open and spraying my face and neck with tiny stone fragments. The blood from my flayed hand rained down onto the heads of the undead below. Horrifyingly, they opened their mouths and held out ruined blackened tongues to catch the droplets, like some nightmarish child hoping for a snowflake on a winter morning. A third shot, this one just closer still and a little higher up. I managed to avoid further damage, but whoever was shooting at me was clearly zeroing in and fast. Two shots in the seven or so seconds since Colleen and Finn sank below the grain. I leapt over the edge and heard a third shot crash into the concrete just before I hit the grain.

It was corn, popping corn to be exact. Round and hard and nearly uniform, they provided almost no surface tension and opened to accept me as readily as they had swallowed my family moments before.

What surprised me most was the sound, or rather the lack of it. The initial rustle of the myriad corn kernels brushing a slipping past one another was quickly repalced by a near total silence. And the darkness. God, back into the darkness. I felt my mind consulse and shiver at the thought of it. Even now I cannot sleep with the lights off.

Before hitting the grain I had taken a deep breath and I tried the only thing I could think to do. I pushed my arms in front of me and pulled, trying to swim through the slippery beads of corn. Almost immediately I found what I was looking for. I grabbed blindly at the flesh I felt at my fingertips, felt my hands close on arm, gripped and pulled.

There was no movement. Again I pulled, and again nothing. There was nothing for me to leveage the additional weight against. Flailing, desperate, I began in that dark silence to panic. Past the point of reason, I pulled with all of the strength I could still muster and jerked and twisted my body, letting the fear and panic control me. Had I been thinking clearly, I surely would have perished.

In my ridiculous desperate wiggling, my damaged hand struck something solid, sending a lightning bolt of pain shooting down my arm and jolting my oxygen starving brain to awareness. Grasping, I found a metal rod embedded in the wasll of that dark and terrible place and I pulled. I pulled until I felt my arms creaking, pulled until the tendons in my shoulders and back and neck threatened to tear, pulled harder, pulled until I could feel my body threatening to rip itself in half with the effort. I pulled again and again, felt something in my chest tighten suddenly, then give and tear, and I still I pulled. It was no longer black in that space, but a kaleidascope of color, fireworks bursting in my vision as the vessels of my eyes swelled and burst with the effort. Then we were moving, rising and the tension was a little less and just a little less and in a moment my face cleared the surface of the corn. I opened my mouth and eyes, sucked in great burning lungfuls of breath and with a final heave that threatened to pull something deep and permanent loose from its internal mooring I pulled my wife's face from below that hateful crop and into the light of day.

Reaching below, I fished blindly for Finn, found a small, fragile arm and yanked him free, setting him across the surface, glanced briefly at his fitfully rising chest, and passed out.

As for what kind of a man I am, I'm not sure I want to know anymore.

Poor, but not in Spirit.

The cop was right about something’s, wrong about others. The ATV is both good and bad. While it is an “off-road” vehicle, and its speed is fairly good, it was really made to ride on downtown paved streets. The wheels are flat and wide, unlike the normal oversized knobby gripped tires that these vehicles normal sport. This means that getting up on the tracks is tough, and the ride is very bumpy. The suspension was made for speed and maneuverability on pavement, not on unstable ground. I decide that riding on the tracks isn’t my best course of action and ride in between them, on the rock bed that separates the two tracks. The going is slow, but not as dangerous as walking. I see a few creatures here and there, but there are no masses of them until I get to the projects.

The train tracks ride right along some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. Large apartments for low income families sprout on one side of the tracks. The bodies of hundreds of undead clamor at the sides of the building and on the windows. Suddenly the risk of being in a poor neighborhood is a benefit. All the windows that line the ground floor for each of these buildings is covered by thick wire or bars, and all the doors are covered with bars as well. These places were made so humans couldn’t get into them, and the zombies are stopped cold. 

On the porches, hundreds of people sit. It is still before noon and the temperature is still rising, it may reach 100 degrees today. With no hope of circulation these people go to the only place that is relatively cool, outside. They look down lazily at the creatures and out at me, seemingly unphased but the horrendousness of it all. I can’t tell what they are thinking exactly. They could be resigned to the fact of death. Having lived in a dangerous neighborhood for so long they might not even be affected by the fact that their apartment is surrounded by creatures that want to kill them; this isn’t much of a change from before there were zombies. In a way they were separated from the world before, segregated to a small community of like incomes and colors, how is this different?

But my cynical side isn’t firing this thought process up. Instead my optimistic side takes hold. Hardship isn’t new to these people. Lean times and mortal danger was already a daily occurrence. This new threat is just another in a long line of threats that they will overcome. 

When some of them notice me they hoot and holler. They yell and wave, some of them laugh, others cry out for some help. I cannot do anything really, but ride by and give them something to mark the day as different from the others. I am going slow when I hear gunfire. I am not sure if it is a gun aimed at me or not, so I hit the throttle, leaving the poor to fight their own fight. If I had to pick a side, I’d say the tenacity of these people will win out.

A little after noon, I get to a point in the train tracks that is going to be a challenge. There is a trestle just outside of a town called Blue Island that crosses a shipping canal. I maneuver the ATV onto the tracks and start to ride over, there are no rocks and the wheels are smallish, so the ATV is bouncing as the wheels fall between the supports of the railroad ties. It is too hard to drive and I am afraid that I will be thrown off into the water below. I get out and try to pull it. It is slow going across the bridge, each tie takes a few seconds, and a lot of effort. 

It isn’t until I get to near the middle when I see them. Some creatures are coming down the tracks from toward Blue Island. I start o furiously pull the ATV when I spin around and see a couple of others ambling toward me from the other way. There are about twenty of them, slowly plodding their way toward me, and I know there is nothing I can do. The way on foot will be too difficult, this machine is really my only chance of survival, but there are too many creatures, and the footing on this bridge is too poor. All the options that I have are quickly running out. The highest probability for survival is the only choice I really take seriously. I jump.

The sound of Silo

At the top of the silo, after hours of running, I leaned over the wall, and peered into a massive pile of grain. Wheat likely, but it was at least 20 feet below.

The undead scratched, grunted, clawed and moaned from below. They weren't getting up, and I sure as hell wasn't getting down. So our choices were grain, suicide, or stand as long as possible on the tiny iron rungs we had been climbing to get to the top.

Tom was talking, but all I could hear were words. I don't know how long since we'd eaten. It had been at least a week since we had any protein. I was hungry, I was thirsty, and I was afraid for Finn. He was sleeping too long now. I never put him down to develop his own mobility skills unless we were sleeping, and my breasts grew more dry with each day. He had eaten all my body had to give him, and I had nothing to nourish myself and make anymore milk. I feared he was starving.

My ears were ringing, my feet and hands bleeding and throbbing, and my vision was swimming. I clung to the wall. Tom stood next to me, still talking, and I still lacked the ability to focus. I just needed to rest.

To dive into the grain was uncertain.... can you drown in grain? It's not solid, so how deep in it would we go, and would be able to swim out? What about my poor, beautiful Finn? And once inside, do we just die? There is no one to come for us, and nowhere else to go.

I can't hold on forever. I can't hold on for an hour. I need to rest. Finn needs food, and things look grim.

Then I heard the boom and whiz of... well.... was it a bullet? Were we being shot at? Fed to the Zombies? I look to the farm house, and see movement behind the partially closed shutters.

People! OH GOD, PEOPLE!

Hillbillies, perhaps, and maybe no better than hippies, but they have a fortified home, and perhaps food and water. It is unclear as to whether we were being shot down, or the zombies were being shot at, but with nothing to lose, I untied Finn from my back and held him toward the house.

I shook him in the air and screamed, 'HELP MY BABY! PLEASE HELP MY BABY! We're thirsty, and we're tired, but PLEASE help my BOY!'.

Tom was yelling as well, but not at them. He was telling me to hide Finn, to protect him. 'He thinks they're shooting at us...' I thought. And I wonder, what difference does it make? Finn is nearly dead, and I can't save him from up here. We don't have long, either. Maybe a gunshot is better than being torn asunder by eternally starving teeth and rotting flesh.

Tom reaches past me to get Finn, and in our struggle, I tumble backwards.... into the silo, still holding an unconscious Finn by his arm... and I feel the wheat move past my body, and Tom's muffled cries from above.

Spearfishing

I awake shivering. It can’t be but maybe 5:00am and the moans from below my treehouse pyre softly rumble into a background noise. There are other noises; the first twitterings of Mourning Doves and an owl hooting in a distant tree.

The throb in my punctured arm is nothing compared to the throb in my head – a dehydration headache perhaps. Or maybe from lack of daily caffeine. I carefully and slowly roll over and look through the cracks in the rotten wood at the nemeses below. The Damned. Nothing changed overnight; still two rotting children, two rotting men – circling the tree, moaning. I need to get out.

My chest tightens signaling a long overdue panic attack. I slowly sit up causing the wood underneath me to groan. My breathing gets quicker and my chest hurts. I close my eyes and try and meditate on The Five Precious Wounds. A little residual Catechesis. It takes me about twenty minutes to calm myself and breathe regularly and by that time the morning light is creeping in to brighten the sky. I put dawn at about 5:50am. I look around to see if there is anything I can use to help myself out of here. Nothing. No hidden Indiana Jones rope tucked away in the corner, no matches, no gun, no miracle, nothing.

My parents’ house is about a football field’s length away. If I start screaming when I think they’ll be awake, I might have a chance to get out my S.O.S. Maybe someone will come running in on a steed of metal to save me.

At about 7:00am when I think my family would be awake I clear my throat and start my screaming:

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPP! I’M IN THE TREEEEEE! HEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPP! I’M IN THE TREEEEEE!

I space out my screams so it sounds intentional and not like I am actually being killed. I do this for about an hour and forty-five minutes straight and with every moment of silence that follows I lose more and more hope. My dry throat burns and my vocal cords, strained and abused, refuse me any further service. A raspy cigaretty sexy voice of desperation. I give in to a good five minute crying session. In my fit, my hand claws at the end of a rotten wood floor plank and unconsciously pulls… the edge tears off in a long splintered piece. I hold it up in front of my dirty tear-streaked face and touch the surprisingly dense yet splintery sharp tip. Oak was always reliable, even when dead. Maybe it would work. It could penetrate skull, maybe. I didn’t have a choice now. Do or die. Or both. I hope the internal rot of these freaks has mushened their bones.

Like a madwoman I start ripping at the edge of the rotten floorboards, yanking up yard-stick long pieces to use as weapons, embedding many nasty splinters into my own skin. When I had about six good sized pieces I took my shirt off and wrapped it around the bunch and tied it to my back like a rigged bundle. A she-MacGuyver in a white Wal-Mart bra. The hard part would be gingerly climbing down the makeshift and crumbling ladder to get just within reach to plant the spear-sticks into their rotting heads. To do this without putting myself in jeopardy would be a trick.

My hands were moist with sweat and shaking I lower myself to the first step. Moaning continues below and gradually loudens when the beasts realize I am coming down the ladder. Another step. This one feels a bit more shaky. I pray the nails don’t give up their duties. One more, honey, come on. My chest and stomach scrape desperately against the bark of the oak, sending small dead pieces of wood shrapnel and dust raining down. My hands are not doing me any favors by sweating so profusely. My fear of heights does not help. Then I get to the magic step. It seems firm enough. I trust this piece of wood and it could be my doom, but I balance both feet as I twist my body sideways. My feet are just out of clawing reach and I cling to the trunk with all my shaking might. I reach back into my makeshift shirt-bundle and – OUCH! I stick myself with an end of a spear. Stupid! Ignoring the pain, I manage to grope and grab the first oak spear, balancing and clinging to the tree with one hand like a spider monkey. A scared one. I hover and wait with my spear upraised for the best opportunity to nail the first one through the top of the skull…

Segway

“Which side?” I say to Rick, the police officer of the now defunct Chicago PD. We walk across the top of the roof of the building, dried tar and gravel crunching as we head to the edge. 

“West, by the red line,” he says. He is letting me know where is abandoned vehicle is. Everyone in the building is sure I am insane, leaving the security for the unknown. Their leader, Mike, made a less than convincing plea for me to stay. He asked why I wanted to leave, and the first thing I said was that I needed to make sure my wife was ok. His response was coarse but possibly true, “Look man, she is probably already dead.”

“Let me tell you about my wife,” I say sharply, “If our roles were reversed and she was down here – she’d be fucking home by now.”

Our conversation is thankfully short and his protests are quick. He can tell I won’t change my mind, and the psychological drain I could inflict on the group could be too great for moral so he acquiesces. 

Rick and I peer over the edge of the building and look at the street. From 20 floors up they look like figurines below, placed her by some malevolent child in a sick game. The creatures march no where, all of them circling but at different arcs. It looks like grind of sharks, all clambering on top of one another to get a taste of the latest catch, but in this case there is nothing to grab. They all cycle in toward the buildings, only to be pushed away by the others behind in a never ending cycle.

Rick points, “you see it out over by the corner?”

“That’s a fucking segway.” I say to him, amusement drained from my voice.

He laughs, “man I’m just fucking with you. It’s over there, behind that truck that's embedded in Walgreen’s."

“That’s a quad…”

This time he doesn’t laugh. “Seriously… That’s what you have?" I say, "A 4 wheeler? You realize it has neither roof nor doors.”

“Look. That’s what I got. I know that it isn’t a full car, but it might be better in some respects. If you come to a clog in the road or something, you can always go around.” I start to protest and he holds up his hand, indicating he isn’t done. “It doesn’t use much gas, and that is a police model, it goes about 65 if you need it to.”

I shake my head, “I guess I have no choice.”

“You could always just stay here.”

“Gimme the keys”

-------

The goodbye isn’t long. I gather what I can carry, take both my makeshift machete and a small crowbar they happily give me. Rick is the one who comes to say goodbye last. 

“You should take this.” He says pulling his revolver out of the holster.

“No, I can’t…” I start.

“Look, I won’t need this here. We can handle all this with the makeshift weapons. Besides, I only have 12 rounds. It can get you out of a jam if you need to, but this isn’t anything I can use. And..." He pauses,  "if you feel the change coming on, at least you can end your misery…” The last statement hangs in the air as I quietly take the gun.

We find a spot closest to my destination, that is surrounded by the least ghouls. The guys pike them as I climb down the ladder and I quickly jog through the street. The ghouls are packed into places, and in other parts of the street there are none. The ones nearby start moving toward me, but I am able to maneuver around them and I don’t have to engage.  I arrive at the ATV with some space to spare. They are closing in, but not so fast that I don’t have time to get the key in the ignition. It starts immediately and I put it in gear and drive. I move past the major center of creatures quickly. Keep distance from the packs as I zig zag over streets and sidewalks. 

I know which way I should go and I head that direction. The train tracks lead to near my home. I can follow them and hopefully avoid crowds of creatures. And with this vehicle it might not be that bad of a ride.

I make my way past the buildings and veer off into the grass. The buildings end and the train yard begins. I drive through the surrounding deserted prairie, and head to the tracks. My car awaits at the station, miles from here. My goal is to make it there by nightfall.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still

When you have nowhere to go, it takes a hell of a long time to get there. I realized this as I ran, my exhausted lungs ripping oxygen from the air around me and converting it into carbon dioxide, exhaled in ragged but rhythmic bursts. I ran and breathed and dragged my family behind me cruelly, heedless of their cries.

I was callousness embodied. I had to be. I had through my inaction sentenced two boys to die, and so mercy became a liability I could ill afford. The game was changing now. I could feel it in the air that burned in my lungs like the fires of hell that would greet me for what I had become and I didn't care. Colleen couldn't keep up and I couldn't ask her too. She began to cry as I dug my fingers deep into her arm and forced her along, her feet bouncing and jumping against the ground more than actually running. Her cries meant nothing to me.

Having moments ago been reborn into this protective running machine by Finn's cries, the irony of my dispassion was not lost on me, nor did it change anything. Let them cry. Let them scream if it came to that, but even as the lactic acid began to set tiny fires across the internal landscape of my person, I didn't slow. My body had changed since this began. It was leaner now, made of the kind of grit and gristle that has woven together the bodies of working men throughout all time. More than that, my mind had changed, grown harder. There was no more room in it for contemplation of ideals and ideas. It didn't matter that I couldn't run anymore, that I was exhausted, that my family couldn't keep up. That was all hypothetical. That was the world as it should be; the world as a place of sanity and reason. That was no longer my world and so we ran and if anything my pace picked up. I accelerated my stride and although my ravaged unnourished sleep deprived body should have broken down, though I should have collapsed upon the floor of the earth in a heaving desperate pile, I ran. I ran to try and match the hellish determination of those who pursued me and the singularity of my focus consumed me.

Colleen had stopped crying now. I doubted she could spare the breath. Finn took up her slack, ratcheting up his protests. How hungry he must have been, how tired. This new world ill suited to the needs of a child. But if I survived so would he, and so would Colleen. I would leave a thousand boys behind to die screaming if only to ward off the demise of my family for a moment. I realized this and ran faster still, trying to outrun any need for redemption, to outpace the realization of my biological selfishness. It followed me like a shadow. I was an atheist in search of a respite from hell.

I would not find it. I found instead a farmhouse and its outbuildings just over a small hill up ahead. My pursuers were still coming, but I had lengthened our lead, given us a few precious moments to slow as I surveyed the area. The house appeared to be old, but sturdy and in good repair. It seemed the obvious choice until I saw the sun glint from a window and I shook at my near miss. It wouldn't take five minutes for the glass to break, social contracts shattered by undead heads and hands, snapping teeth and desperate hunger. We would have been consumed withing an hour had I not corrected my intial judgment, murdered by my poor decision as much by my poor decision as by the hands of the undead. I changed course in mid stride, almost sending Colleen to the ground, but yanking up on her arm to keep her up. I charged forward toward the massive concrete dominance of a grain silo. Gratified that there were no doors, I skid to a halt at the face of the thing.
Rebar rings circled the structure every three feet or so, creating a widely spaced but not impossible ladder. I had no idea what we would find inside had no idea if the silo would be empty or full or if there was a way to climb back down on the interior wall of the thing. It didn't matter. The house was certain death; the dilapidated barn no better. I looked at Colleen who appeared ready to pass out, then back at our pursuers. A hundred yards behind us the first of the undead was, of course, still running (when did they learn to run like that?) after us, only slightly hindered by a horribly mauled leg that looked as if it might bend entirely in the wrong direction with each ungraceful but effective lurch. I took Finn from Colleen's arms and began to climb. I motioned for her to follow.

Thankfully, it was not just my own body that had hardened during our ordeal, but Colleen's as well. She climbed grimly, but with competence. We made it six rings up, about a third of the way toward the zenith of the six story monolith when the first of the running undead hit the concrete wall at full speed. The sound of bone and flesh impacting the immovable concrete wall was gruesome, but the impact was of no consequence. The thing clambered to its feet as quickly as it was down, moaning through its ruined skull as it reached vainly into the air for the meal it had gamely chased. For the moment at least, it didn't seem able to climb, and without another glance back, Colleen and I struggled upward.

It was, I reflected later, a day for irony. Taking shelter in a grain silo was very nearly like storing ourselves in the refrigerator. Man had poured grain into silos for hundreds of years to store food for later consumption. Now it was we who were the food, climbing desperately into the larder.

Chicago, Where the Weak are Killed and Eaten

The pikes did what they needed them to do. With trial and error we were able to build the scaffold around the bottles of water, seal it off with concrete form boards and kill everything inside in less than two days. With the new strategy, the guys had planned to build the scaffold across the street and possibly take a few buildings back in the vicinity. The claiming of new buildings meant more resources, a bigger spot on multiple roofs for rain collection, and more survivors. Everyone was in favor of it.

I hadn’t slept in a long time. Really slept anyway… Lying still and jumping awake at any creak, moan or whateverthefuck wasn’t really sleeping, that was closing your eyes long enough so you don’t hallucinate. So when I made it across the street, I fell out. There were plenty of people watching as others slept to warn them if anything happened to the defenses, so when I finally did hit the pillow I was out.

I sat awake when I heard the rhythmic thumping. Zombies have no rhythm, their pounding is pure chaos, but this had some organization. When I looked around I saw no one inside, so I trotted out to the scaffold. The thumping was accompanied by a distant voice, it was a helicopter, announcing something.

All the people in the building looked up, and saw the thing hovering in the distance. There were a few murmurs at first, and then when we could tell someone was broadcasting their voice, everyone quieted down. It was hard to hear at first, but eventually we were able to make it out.

“We are moving toward Chicago. Please stay inside. We will be making a sweep of the city in a few days. Please, stay inside until we come into your building. We need your full cooperation. Just hold out for a few more days.”

The voice was shaky and unsure. Weeks ago I would have felt sorry for the person behind it. Now I could feel the anger welling up inside me.

“When we move through the blocks and liberate buildings, we need you to kneel and put your hands on your head to show that you aren’t infected. Anyone who disobeys will be shot.”

How fucking dare you send some snot nosed little kid to talk to us over the broadcast, I thought. His voice gave everything away. He was either scared or poorly trying to deceive. Fucking cock suckers, I thought, getting angrier by the second. I hope his fucking helicopter explodes… no, I quickly changed my mind. I wanted it to crash land with him trapped and on fire, then I wanted him to finish dying by getting eaten alive by these goddamn abominations crawling the streets.

“Please stay inside!” his voice was a shriek now, a begging, pleading weak little shriek. It got higher and higher as it went down the block, and more insecure with each passing moment. It hit a crescendo when a group down the street that didn’t care what the guy was saying ran out onto ground level, disregarding the fact that the street was filled with undead. The ran out, illuminated by the high powered light of the helicopter, waving at the sky like a pack of starving retards trapped on an island.

“No! Stay inside! We can’t pick you up! Go! No! No!” He squealed pathetically as the group was torn apart. The mic went silent quickly thereafter as the helicopter rose in altitude and flew off faster.

I leave tomorrow, I thought. I am not sitting here waiting to see if they are telling the truth. Even if they are, they aren’t going to let me hop a ride out to my house to get my wife. No, there is no choice now. I have to leave.

Lunatic Fringe

The throb in my arm awakens me. It is twilight. I open my eyes and see the sparkling diamond of Venus rising. A slowly moving satellite crosses the sky where the dark blue meets black, far away from this inexplicable chaos. I’m used to seeing airplane contrails scar the sky above this area all the time. Now there are none.

The soft groans of the determined undead drift up to meet my ears as I carefully shift my weight on the rotten boards of the tree house floor. The air is noticeably cooler and a soft summer breeze spitefully rustles my hair.

I peer down between cracks in the tree house floor and see that we have a visitor. Another undead neighbor - looks like Rich Aldanus - round bare gut hanging over his Chicago Bears lounge pants, socklessly shuffles in to join the party, arms raised, clawing ridiculously at the bark of the tree like the others, moaning for blood. Maybe he’s a fresh kill.

I recall hearing a radio program on the topic of stress. The science was that the body’s secondary functions such as growth and reproductive processes halt during extreme times of stress. I thought about how I wouldn’t even need to be on the pill right now to stay unpregnant. After this I realize how much I am missing Cecil. And I begin to weep bitterly, my tears landing on the splintered gray floorboards. I could use his military directions right now. When I had got drunk and puked in the car after my company Christmas party two years ago he held me up, got me in the house, got me undressed and cleaned up, and sternly commanded me to stop crying and keep my head over the toilet bowl. I feel like my head is over a toilet bowl right now. And all this shit is swirling below me, groaning to reclaim my body somehow. I hope Cecil is holding his own against these fuckers wherever he is right now.

The raccoon punctures in my arm stopped bleeding but are looking swollen. I’m sure an infection is well on its way. Great, just what I need.

More stars appear in what’s quickly becoming the night sky. As the colors fade I think of the song Lunatic Fringe by Red Rider how the beginning is echoey and perfect for this picture. I cradle my injury and curl up in a fetal position.

I have to get out of here tomorrow. Come hell or high water.