Day 319 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 1.1 - (1,409 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 1.1

“We’ve been here for two days now, exactly what is our plan?”

“Two days? Wow! Time sure does fly when you’re hiding from Zombies!”

James and Derek stared each other down, the accusations embedded in their tones. The sun was low in the sky which meant that they would have to act now or wait until morning, the reanimated corpses that stalked the town did not know night from day, they appeared to hunt by scent or sound, possibly both. Either way since the power had gone there was no light in the town at night and it was moonlight or blindness.

Since the end of civilization there had been few perks, but with the total lack of ambient light from cities and towns you got the clearest and most brilliant views of the stars at night. It was beautiful and clear beyond belief, but that made nothing but an aesthetic difference to their lives.

“What’s left to check out?” James asked ignoring the sarcasm from Derek and looked back over the edge of the roof before checking his watch. It was certainly not the first nor the last time he was thankful for the self-winding watch that he had been given as a leaving gift when he was ‘let go’ from his job in the city.  He had wondered more than once what the rest of the office team were doing, if any of them had survived the chaos and death the radiated from the event that lead to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Derek had never left the small town they grew up in and had been both happy to see his brother come home but he had a tinge of schadenfreude at his failure to keep the big city job and the big city paycheck. There was some satisfaction at having the white sheep of the family being brought down to his level, and seeing him not leave them all behind. Of course he had come home with some money, some toys and things from his time there, he had hardly been destitute nor had he been wasting his money on hookers and cocaine as their grandfather had suggested he should have been.

They were all gone now and only James and Derek were left, luck and sheer randomness of the universe had conspired to keep them alive while the remainder of their home town, their family included had all succumbed to the virus, the infection or whatever it was that caused this mess. The colourful and deranged character that was their grandfather had been the last to go. He, Frank, had been the first to voice the numbing effect of the plague, as he called it, on the psyche. They had brutally killed the people they had once knew, or quietly let them go from their new torture. The boys were never sure which way his mood would swing after a day on clean up, killing or incapacitating the walking dead that stalked the town.

Their mother Susan had been the first to go, she had fallen ill very early on and she died in a matter of hours after being infected. The three of them had been duck hunting when they got back to the family home, on the outskirts of town, and shrouded in plastic and a giant tent. They thought that in the three days they had been out in the swamps that perhaps some kind of bug infestation had made it to the house.

The police that prevented them from going into their own house disabused them of the notion pretty quickly. They all had masks on and no one wanted to touch anybody else, everyone was keeping their distance, and guns were drawn. Frank had his hand on the rifle the whole time but the boys were blind to the tension and violence. All they knew was that they had a mother before they went away and now they were orphans.

Their father’s dead body lay under a canvas blanket in the front yard and they could see his feet underneath the tarpaulin sticking out, his boots recognizable as his best crocodile ones, the ones that he wore when he wanted to feel special. They wanted to see his face but they were not allowed within a hundred yards of the house and it soon became apparent why.

“She’s comin’ out!” Came a shout from one of the deputies and all the guns were raised and aimed at the front door of their family home.

“What are you doing?” Derek was yelling and as he tried to wrest a gun from the Sheriff a number of his deputies, some of which had been hastily recruited from the town, held him back and prevented him from moving.

Frank had been sitting on the sidelines leaning against the truck and now he knew it was time to act. He raised the rifle and held it steady on the Sherriff, a man he had known for decades. “Ya’ll want to let him go now.” His drawl became slower, more deliberate and overstated when he wanted to appear dangerous, and his reputation had preceded him.

“Now Frank, that aint gonna do no good now.” Sherrif Dobbs did not tell his men to stand down. He gave Frank such a despaired look at having to do what he was about to have to do, that Frank was tempted to pull the trigger regardless and put the man out of his obvious misery and end his suffering with a bullet.

“Ray, you need to let the boy go.” Frank was less sure of himself, but no sideways glance from a depressed Ray Dobbs was going to change his mind on his family’s rights on their own property.

“You ain’t seen what this thing does, you been out for three days. The world changed in three days.” He looked back the boys and then at house where the front door was wide open and the wide eyed terror or rotted flesh and crazed foaming mouths that was once the boy’s mother now stood.

“The world changed.” He said and raised his rifle.

“No!” James leapt into action and in a move that surprised everyone he took the barrel of the rifle and pulled it to his own chest, then stood in the way his arms spread.

“Get out of the way James.”

Derek and James both looked at their grandfather who had gone white in the face and was not looking at them, instead he was staring at his daughter, what was left of her and his rifle was aimed unwaveringly at her.

“Grandad?” James was confused and Derek still struggling against his captors was slowing down his resistance as he saw the body that was occupying his mothers clothes, stumbling towards the ruckus in the driveway, a few hundred feet away in the long empty space between the farmhouse and the road.

“Step aside boy.” His hands did not flicker or deviate, but his voice sounded like he was driving on a gravel road.

“Frank, come on now, you shouldn’t have to do this, we can … we have had to do ... the world changed.” Ray was offering to do the hard job.

“There’s no hope you say?” Frank was staring down the sights and waiting for an excuse to not shoot. He could see though there was nothing of his daughter inside the skin and bones slathering slowly across the lawn.

“They say the brain is mush in parts, the parts that make us who we are. The motor functions are … well they are the motor that keeps them running, we don’t know why, but the personality part? It’s like rotten fruit, even if you cut it out the rest of it is tainted.”

“It should be family. The world hasn’t changed that much.” Frank stated and fired the one bullet that he needed to and hit the zombie Susan square between the eyes.

Frank watched through the scope for a sign, some relief at release or some sign that she was now at peace. All he saw was more evidence that nothing resembling a soul was at play in the collection of muscle and blood and skin and bone.

“The mind is weak and the back is strong.” He sung the word to himself in a deep voice, separating the reality of what he just did from the imaginary world of Tennessee Ernie Ford.