The Gorging (21 page)

Outside the restaurant, Bobby and Troy looked back behind themselves as the growling noise seemed closer. In fact, it is closer. Closer than ever.

“Let’s go in that restaurant,” said Bobby as he pointed to the Rockin’ Roll Café.

“Those people might be just like the ones coming after us.” Troy looked back and forth at the crowd and to the restaurant. “I don’t feel like dying today, man.”

“If we were going to die, it would have been in that damn airplane.” Bobby quickly walked up the steps to the restaurant. “Now we will die if we don’t get under cover and fast.” He beat on the door to the restaurant.

“Fuck it. You’re right.” Troy ran up the steps next to Bobby and pounded on the door next to him. “Hey! Let us in!”

Inside the restaurant, Betty screamed as the two men banged on the door. “Don’t let them in Frank. They’re crazy. For God’s sake don’t let them in.”

“Shut up woman,” said Frank as he unlocked the door. “They’re not crazy. I’m letting them in. They look more normal than you do right now.”

“You better not do that. I won’t talk to you anymore.” She ran behind the counter and ducked down.

“Good. I’ve heard enough of your shit for one day already.” He pushed the door open and Bobby and Troy ran inside.

“Thank God,” said Troy. “Those crazy people were coming after us.”

Bobby helped hold the door closed as Frank quickly locked it. “Let’s put a few chairs in front of it before those people get close,” said Bobby.

“That’s a good idea,” Frank said. The three men grabbed chairs and shoved them against the door. The hostiles outside were getting closer, but were starting to break off into different directions. The must have realized their group was too big and they were scaring away any potential food. About ten of them stopped in front of the restaurant. They could still smell Troy and Bobby. They knew the two men were somewhere close. Possibly inside the restaurant straight ahead or maybe they had run directly behind it. They are somewhere close. They can smell them.

“Let’s get behind the counter so they can’t see us,” Bobby said quietly. They all ducked down behind the counter. Betty looked at the new additions to her and Frank’s group with disapproval. She scooted down further away from the men on her knees and kept her head down low as she stared up at them with her cold eyes. They were fierce eyes. The same look that Frank gets when he comes in the house with grease on his hands and dirt on his shoes. The same look he gets when he spits in the kitchen sink or forgets to put the toilet seat back down after taking a piss. Betty stared at them and wished they were not there. She wished they were out in the streets being eaten alive in order to spare her and Frank from any more terror.

Troy peeked over the counter just barely enough to see the bloodthirsty people standing in the street.

“Are they still there?” asked Bobby.

“Yeah, but they look lost. I think they might move on.” Troy watched as the psychotic people in the street looked around, confused. The people knew there were live humans somewhere close, but they could not understand where they could have gone. When all the people had turned hostile, they must have turned stupid. The hostiles kept looking around and then slowly went away.

“I didn’t think they were ever going to leave,” said Frank. “Damn people have been crazy like that for the past few hours.” Frank sat down behind the counter and put a hand out for Bobby to shake. “The name’s Frank. This is my wife, Betty.”

Bobby shook hands with Frank. “I’m Bobby. Nice to meet you.” Troy shook hands with Frank and introduced himself. Troy and Bobby looked at Betty, but she turned her head away. She was clearly disappointed that Frank had let the two men in. Bobby didn’t want to say anything to her out of respect for Frank. He turned to Frank and said, “Can you tell us what’s going on out there?”

“Well,” said Frank. “I don’t really know where to begin, but you probably won’t believe it.”

“I think we can believe anything at this point,” said Troy. “We just crashed landed in the middle of the interstate. So anything you tell us we’ll probably think it to be reasonable and believable.”

“That was your plane?” asked Frank. “We didn’t think anyone survived that. We saw the flames and heard the explosion. It shook the entire building. I thought the place was going to come down because of the shockwave.”

“We were the only two to escape. I lost my best friend, Pete,” Bobby said. “What happened to that building we saw go down?”

“Oh that building. That was a freak accident.” Frank shook his head and had a slight smile to his face. Not because he thought it was funny or anything, but because the situation was so fucked up he couldn’t help himself. “Right when everything started happening, the driver of a propane truck drove straight into the lobby of the building. Drove right up the steps. Damn thing exploded and the building must have come down not ten minutes later. I didn’t see what happened to the driver to make him do that, but it doesn’t matter now. I guess he maybe went crazy while he was driving.”

“What made everyone go crazy?” asked Troy.

“Yeah, do you know what it was?” Bobby asked. “We had some people go nuts on the plane. That’s why we crashed, because the co-pilot attacked the pilot. Ate his face off. Blood everywhere. We were lucky enough to have the pilot survive long enough to get us on the ground.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Betty. She covered her mouth with the palm of her hand and shook her head. She wasn’t used to anything out of the ordinary. She had spent most of her life as a housewife. Spending her time cooking and cleaning with the occasional burned corn bread was the most excitement she ever had. The only times she got out and around other people was whenever Frank convinced her to go on a road trip with him. “Did he live? The pilot?”

“No,” said Bobby. “He died in the plane crash.” Betty looked as though she was going to start crying.

“It’s probably good that he did,” said Frank. “I wouldn’t want to go through life knowing my face had been eaten off.”

“So what is it that happened?” asked Troy. He moved closer to Frank, making sure to keep his head down just in case the hostiles outside were staring into the restaurant. “Do you think it’s terrorists? Like some kind of poisoning or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank. “Me and Betty were walking down Second Avenue when all of a sudden it seemed like everything just stopped. Like time stopped itself. I did notice a lot of people walking around looking sick before it happened, but I didn’t think anything of it until after it happened. One minute everything was normal and the next...shit went haywire.”

“Hey,” said Troy as he looked at Bobby. “That guy on the plane that went nuts first...He was sick before he got on the plane...Maybe that’s what it is. People were sick and then just lost their minds. Like they went rabid or something.”

“Could be,” said Bobby. He put his hand on his chin and looked like a professor, thinking really hard about what he was going to say next. He shook his head and asked Frank, “Did you see anything else out of the ordinary when it happened?”

“Nothing very significant, or at least nothing that could be a distinguishing factor that made everyone go crazy. You know, like a bright light, or a buzzing signal? Nothing like you would see in one of those cheap science fiction flicks. It just happened.”

“It’s the end of times is what it is.” Betty shook her finger at the three men. “God’s coming down and punishing everyone for their sins. That’s what he’s doing. It’s the rapture and we’re all going to pay for our sins. That’s what this is.”

“Shut up Betty. You’re scaring these young men.” Frank shushed her with a finger in front of his lips. He looked back to Bobby and Troy and continued his theory. “I don’t know exactly what time it was, but the moment it happened, everyone just stopped. Well not everyone, just the ones that went crazy. They stopped suddenly and the next thing we know, all these people started growling and hissing like dogs or bears. They started running at people who didn’t seem like they were crazy. Then the crazy people started jumping at them and taking them to the ground.”

Betty chimed in again. This time her voice was shaky and the tears were boiling up in her eyes. “They started eating them...Ripped their—” she took a deep breath “throats apart.” She started sobbing. “They killed them for no reason. And they’ll kill us, too.”

Frank got up and went beside Betty. He put an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder with his other hand. “It’s okay honey. We’re safe in here. Don’t worry. They won’t come in here.”

“How did you two get away?” Bobby asked. “There must have been a lot of people on the street here in Nashville with the tourists and all.”

“We got lucky I guess.” Frank leaned his head against Betty’s. She still sobbed, but quietly. “When we saw it happen, I grabbed Betty’s arm and we ran down the sidewalk. By the time we got to this place it was empty. We watched a couple of crazy people run out the back when we came in. Thank God they didn’t see us coming. We would have been screwed...After we got in, I locked the doors in the back while Betty stood lookout up front.”

“How come we didn’t see that many bodies on the street?” Troy asked. “I mean if all these people went crazy and started attacking people and killing them. Where are the bodies?”

“Believe me son,” Frank said quickly. “There are bodies out there. There aren’t that many though. Mostly because it looked like more people went crazy than those that did not.”

“I wonder what made them go nuts,” said Bobby. He shook his head and went into one of his deep thinking modes again. Frank and Troy stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to say something else. For some reason, one that Bobby could not explain until later, a thought popped in his head about Eddie. A little smile broke on his face as he pictured in his mind playing toy cars with Eddie back at their home in Wyoming. Then the smile went away. He remembered how Eddie had gotten sick the day before and there were so many people in the hospital that thought they were sick. If the people had not felt better shortly after throwing up, it could have been considered an epidemic and it could have been a great news story for Bobby to put together. Eddie was sick, just like the sickness Troy described with the crazy man on the airplane. Just like the sickness that their new normal friend, Frank, had described just before everyone went crazy. Was Eddie still sick this morning? Bobby had no idea. He left too early in the morning and didn’t tell his son goodbye. He was starting to wish that he had. “My son was sick yesterday...He had eaten a bad steak biscuit yesterday morning...My wife and I took him to the hospital, but he was fine shortly after...I hope he wasn’t sick this morning when I left.”

“What are you saying?” asked Frank. Troy’s eyes opened wide and his mouth started to droop open. Betty dropped her hand from her mouth and stared at Bobby.

“There were a lot of people sick at the hospital,” said Bobby. He wiped away the sweat that had beaded on his forehead. “If I remember correctly, the doctor had said something about a type of possible food poisoning. I think everyone there had eaten meat.” They all looked at Bobby as if he were crazy, but they stared with curiosity at the point he was trying to make. “I know this sounds crazy, but when was the last time any of you have eaten anything with meat in it?”

“Shit I don’t know,” said Troy. “I haven’t had a hamburger in I don’t know how long.”

“What about you two?” asked Bobby, pointing to Frank and Betty.

Betty looked at Frank. Frank hesitated before finally answering. “We’re vegetarians.”

“What does this have to do with the people going crazy?” asked Troy. “How could you possibly come to the conclusion that it’s connected to meat?” Troy raised his eyebrows as he asked Bobby.

“Look,” said Bobby. “My partner and I were flown into Nashville so we could take a rental car up to Franklin, Kentucky. We were supposed to be gathering information for a news story about a massive amount of cattle that had died there. There were also other farm animals that had died as well.”

“All the way from Wyoming?” Betty interrupted.

“My boss is an asshole. He’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the Cheyenne Channel 4 News has the story.” Bobby chuckled. “It’s funny. I was going to quit after this trip.” Everyone sat quiet, listening to Bobby and watching him as he unfolded his story. They felt like Bobby held the key to unlock the information they needed to understand what was going on in the city, and what was likely going on across the country and probably even the world for that matter. Bobby said, “I didn’t watch the news and I don’t know if this is happening anywhere else, but I think it’s safe to say it is.” He looked toward Frank. “You said the people you saw where sick. The people on our plane were sick. The people in the hospital yesterday were sick—“

Troy interrupted, “and none of us have eaten any meat since we can remember...This is crazy.” He stood up and started pacing back and forth behind the counter. “I need a drink.” He looked over at the rows of liquor that would make an alcoholic praise the Lord.

“You’re right. This is crazy,” said Bobby, “but it just makes sense if you think about it this way.”


Betty grabbed Frank’s hand and spoke. “So we are all probably to die.”


“Oh, stop it Betty,” said Frank. “We made it this far already haven’t we?”


“Made it this far! Seriously?” She jumped to her feet and flung his hand away. “We made it from the street to inside this God forsaken café! We haven’t made it anywhere.”