Decaying Humanity (16 page)

    “Can we save him?” Shay asked quietly.

    I took a quick look around for emphasis, “I don’t think so.”

    We were frozen in curiosity as they ripped him from through windshield. Half of the zombies were dragging him out and the other half were taking bites. He didn’t scream at all; instead he was laughing a maniacal laugh. One of the undead sunk its teeth into his cheek and tore the skin from his face. He was still laughing out of insanity, with his teeth exposed through the side of his face. This man must have lost his mind a long time ago. The sounds of his laughter were truly haunting as they pulled him down to the ground.

    I started to step towards the man. I had to see it. I could feel my chest heaving rapidly with excitement. I just needed to taste it, just a little piece. Shay grabbed my arm and pulled me back. She could see the huge smile on my face and only looked sad. Her upset look snapped me out of my trance.

    “You need to hold it back,” she said.

    “I, I wanted to go over there.”

    “I know. We have to resist the urge. We aren’t one of those things.”

    “I’m sorry, you’re right.” I knew she was, but my concentration had faded into only one thought. A new smell drifted through the air that cut through the rot. That smell was fresh and intoxicating, but I managed to pull myself away.

    As we continued our trek to the super store, I tried to learn more about her, and our condition.

    “So, have you ever?” I asked.

    She paused for a long time, opening her mouth to start sentences and stopping herself. Finally she said, “I did once and it was horrible.”

    “What happened?”

    “I went out looking for food, and I found a small restaurant named Ella’s Drive In. I banged on the door and told them that I didn’t want to steal. I just wanted them to respond and then I would leave. I didn’t hear anything, so I crowbarred the door open. There were two zombies that had just been standing there, but the noises I made seemed to draw their attention. I stepped inside and started rooting through some of the boxes.”

    “Then what?” I asked.

    “My attention had gone straight to the small storage room. I should have searched the place entirely before digging through those boxes. A waitress had locked herself inside and must have been too scared to respond when I knocked. I didn’t even notice her until they were already on top of her.”

    “Oh,” I said.

    “I just stood there, paralyzed as they began to eat her. I was ashamed of letting them in and not stopping them. Beneath those feelings was a dark craving that I couldn’t shake. I ripped the zombies off of her and smashed their brains in with the crowbar. Then I was standing over her as she bled profusely onto the floor. I knew that she was never going to survive. I watched as she clenched at her bleeding neck wound. She looked up at me and just asked why.”

    “Why?”

    “Yeah, just that single word. My fingers cracked into those monstrous claws and then I opened her skull like a briefcase. Darkness clouded my vision and I was trapped watching a movie, a terribly dark film that I couldn’t look away from. I cried for hours afterwards, lying in a pool of her blood. I sat there as the sun set and I dreamt of killing myself. The only difference between me and undead was that my heart was still beating. I knew I had to die; I was a danger to everyone around me. I couldn’t go on knowing that I was a dangerous monster.”

    “You aren’t a monster. Monsters try to hurt people, on purpose. You have done nothing but help people ever since I met you.”

    “I infect people just by sharing the same room with them. Hell, I may have infected the whole city,” she snapped. “I was too scared to end it all and I convinced myself it was okay, because I found a box of dried shrimp. It wasn’t until we saved you that day; that I truly felt like I had redeemed myself. I fell for you and I became selfish again. I just started thinking about us, to hell with everyone else.”

    “That’s not selfish, it’s human.”

    “I kept that paper from the Army next to the bed and stared at it all night. I could just turn myself in and everything would be forgiven. My sacrifice would save hundreds or thousands of people. I could save humanity. Whatever they would do to me to extract a cure was nothing compared to what I deserved.”

    “Don’t talk like that; you didn’t cause this.”

    “I know, but I could stop it.”

    We didn’t talk much after that, she had quickly gone from her fun-loving light mood to a dark and self-loathing one. She was upset and asked for a minute alone. When I made a remark about that being difficult when surrounded by a horde of zombies, she didn’t laugh.

    A few minutes later she walked up to me and forced a smile. It was fake, but it still made me feel better.

    “Sorry, I’m better now. Camping huh, I always wanted to go camping,” she said.

    “I would have chosen the weekend playing video games, watching movies, and eating junk food, but yeah, camping was my second pick,” I joked.

    We neared the turn into the Allmart and there were signs everywhere. They had originally been road signs, but they were turned around and had spray-painted messages. They warned of trespass and threatened death to any that went further. The final turn to Allmart had a large sign with a message on it. Sprayed in red were the words “Hostile occupants - do not approach.”

    Tied in chains around the metal leg of the sign was a single female zombie. It was wrapped around her waist and her arms were held up over her head by wire and screws. This girl of probably twenty years old stood there groaning and staring into the emptiness. Her shirt had been torn and revealed both her breasts, which may had been appealing before the turn. Her pants or skirt had been removed and lay on the ground nearby.

    “Oh, I hope that’s not what I think happened,” I said shocked.

    Shay didn’t say anything, but she looked furious. She marched up to the sign and began to rip the screws from the sign, freeing the girl’s arms. The girl made a single chomp at the air and looked towards the Allmart. I started to pull at the chains, trying to find where to unhook them. Shay snapped them in half with her bare hands and they fell to the soggy ground. The zombie just started walking towards the super store without any hesitation. I thought to myself,
“We will all get our revenge today
.”

    I wondered if there was a leader, some shadowy figure pulling the strings of these thugs, hunters, and convicts. If so, they had become more of a monster than we ever could be.

    “Let’s go,” Shay commanded. I simply obeyed.

    The two buildings that shared the area, a hardware store and an office supply store, had been burned to the ground. Ashes and rubble surrounded a partially erect skeleton of the once sturdy building. Some beams and parts of the building remained, but there was absolutely nothing of value left. No one could find anything of use or even use the building as shelter ever again. I figured the raiders didn’t like having neighbors and dealt with it harshly.

    We continued to walk up the road and the parking lot of the super store came into view. There was a mangle of cars wrapping around the parking lot creating a sort of makeshift barrier. We scanned the building, looking for snipers on the roof and saw nothing. We approached the first car in the barrier and looked through the side windows. The parking lot had been cleared almost entirely of cars and its emptiness seemed so out of place it made me nervous. Inside were a few wandering zombies, and then I began to see the horrors.

    A zombie dangled from one of the light poles, tied up with chains. Its legs had been chewed off and it swayed back and forth, reaching towards the front door. I nudged Shay and pointed at it.

    “These people are sick,” she said.

    “Why would you tie up a zombie like that?” I asked.

    “Look at his legs and the height he is dangling. He wasn’t a zombie when they strung him up,” she replied coldly.

    It hadn’t hit me at first. They tied up a living person and suspended him just high enough for the undead to eat his bottom half. I had originally thought their sick and twisted messages were about survival. You know, scare the hell out of people so they would stay away, but this was simply too much.

    Our entourage of dead began to paw and slap at the barrier of cars. In time, one might accidentally trip or crawl under a vehicle, but their wall of SUVs proved rather effective. Shay and I continued to scan the building before moving any further. The last thing any of us wanted was for our story to end abruptly with a well-placed bullet to the head.

    The building never had windows, and for us that was a huge advantage. The two entrances normally had large glass sliding doors but they had been blocked off by boards and slabs of sheet metal. They had very low visibility and with no one posted on the roof, I felt we had an opening to get around the parking lot and look at some of the emergency exits on the side.

    “Oh hell no,” Shay said and began to push on the green SUV.

    “What?” I asked.

    She glared at me and her face had gone slightly feral, something I still hadn’t quite gotten used to seeing. She pointed through the gap and continued to push on the vehicle.

    I peered between the gaps and saw a tall black man chained to a light post. Desmond! He was restrained and exhausted. Around him were the corpses of about a dozen zombies. “
Oh hell no was right,”
I thought as I leaned in and helped push. The vehicle slid sideways, leaving a light trail of black rubber on the pavement. We faced each other as we put our backs into it. I could feel my face straining from the weight. She gave me a disfigured smile that while creepy, was still comforting. We are the boogey men and we are coming for you, raiders.

    We cleared enough space between the vehicles that we could squeeze in and we sprinted over to Desmond. He stood slumped over with his head staring down at the ground. In his hand was a yellow painted fragment of concrete. It was drenched in blood and chunks of brain matter.

    “Desmond!” I called out.

    He instinctively swung the hunk of concrete in our direction and barely lifted his head.

    “Desmond, it’s us,” Shay called out.

    He lifted his head and he looked like he had been awake for weeks.

    “What are … is that you?” he said hoarsely.

    Shay threw herself at him, wrapping him partially with a hug. He dropped the concrete weakly as she hugged him. He looked like he was about to tear up and then pulled away, wiping his face with his sleeve. He cleared his throat loudly.

    “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

    “We would never leave you behind,” I said.

    “Ungh!” a zombie moaned, only a few steps behind me.

    I spun around to see a dozen zombies, only paces away.

    “Stop them! We have to get Desmond out of here!” Shay cried out.

    I unsheathed both machetes and began to effortlessly decapitate the undead. It felt wrong, not because I was practically one of them, but because they just stood there.

    “Stop it!” Desmond shouted as Shay snapped the chains from the post.

As I swung the blades, I could feel my forearms pulsing with a strength I never had. My veins stuck out and were almost black underneath my skin. I stopped after the fifth zombie fell to the ground with a
thud
, its head rolling away from its body. My veins began to fade back to their normal appearance.

    “Stop, I said,” Desmond struggled to say. Shay had jumped between him and a zombie. The zombie dressed in skater apparel just stood there staring at the building. I scrunched my brow as it showed no reaction to Desmond.

    “Um, Shay,” I said.

    She noticed the motionless zombie and stood up straight. She turned around and looked at Desmond. He pointed at one of the original corpses at his feet. It was a spreader that had practically exploded. Piles of loose skin were strewn about the ground and a huge gaping hole in its chest revealed a nearly empty, liquefied center.

    “You can’t dodge their goo when you are chained to a pole. I hit it with this concrete and it exploded all over me,” he said sadly.

    I was upset, but losing people had started to become routine. The lack of emotion made me feel even more hollow. Shay dropped to her knees uttering a low roar. She began to slam her fists into the pavement and it sent small cracks rippling through the ground. Desmond put his hand on her.

    “Stop it, girl,” he said. “I have until I fall asleep right?”

    “Yeah, but you look exhausted,” she said wiping the angry tears from her eyes.

    “Are you here to finish this?” he asked.

    “We came to save you and hopefully get some supplies. We were going to make a go at the whole forest thing. After this, I’m not just here for supplies, I am here to wipe them off the map forever. So yeah, this ends today.”

    “Count me in. How come the zeds aren’t attacking you, Jim? Did you get splashed, too?”

    “Not exactly, it’s a long story,” I responded.

    “Never mind then, stories make me sleepy.”

    We had retreated back to the exterior of the super store barrier. Many of the zombies had slipped into the parking lot and moved towards the front doors. Desmond began to help us understand what we were about to face.

    “I never got inside, but I seent a lot of their movements from here. They use this main lot as a sort of funnel trap. The zeds that manage to get past the cars get stuck in here. Then they basically act as guard dogs against the living.”

    “What about the front doors?” I asked.

    “They don’t use them at all. They all boarded up with scrap wood and some sheet metal. They use the side doors and the auto-center is where they park all them damn trucks.”

    “What about guards?” Shay asked.

    “Sheet, they don’t even think about that. I heard them talking and they said no one would dare come for me. They were confident bout that.”