The Gorging (22 page)

“It’s okay Betty.” Bobby interrupted. “If we stick together we can make it out of this. We can make it out of the city where the population is smaller. Besides, I want to get home to my wife and son back in Wyoming.”

Betty’s lips started trembling as she stared at Bobby. She looked as though she were halfway between fainting and falling over sobbing again. She leaned against the counter and put her head in her hands and wept. Frank sat on the floor with his back to the counter. He had enough of his annoying wife for the day. He didn’t even bother comforting her again. Bobby felt Frank’s pain.

Troy popped the top on a bottle of whiskey and poured out four shot glasses to the rim. He passed a glass to Bobby and Frank. Betty shook her head and declined the shot. “I think we all need a drink after this morning,” said Troy. She changed her mind and downed it like a professional.

“If all this is true,” Frank said as he wiped the wetness of the whiskey from his lips, “then we do need to get as far away from here as possible. This is the south. Everyone loves to eat meat down here.”

“All that southern home cooking,” said Troy as he poured another round.

“We want to get back to St. Louis,” said Frank, “but it probably won’t matter anyway if what you say is true. There won’t be anything left there either.”

Troy downed another shot and slammed the glass on the bar top. “I’ve been in this town for three hours and I hate it already.” Bobby and Frank cracked a faint laugh. “If we’re getting the hell out of here then we need to get going. I don’t want to be sitting in the heart of Music City while a bunch of bloodthirsty nut-jobs are trying to take a chunk out of my neck. This certainly isn’t the way I planned on visiting Nashville. So much for the Opry.” Troy laughed hysterically. “You think they’ll give me a refund on my tickets?” Everyone stared at Troy for a moment and wondered if the two shots he had already made him a little tipsy.

“He’s right,” said Bobby. “We can’t stay here. There’s no telling how many people are out there. They seem to be in groups right now, but that could change. They could break up and then it would be harder to escape. We wouldn’t hear them coming and we wouldn’t know where to look. They could jump out of an alleyway or from behind a trashcan and get one of us.”

Betty turned quickly and grabbed Frank’s hand. “Well, what in the hell are we still sitting here for? Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Bobby declared that Betty was right. Troy and Frank surely assumed the same, but Bobby felt the most sincere about getting out of there. At that moment, he made up his mind that he would do whatever it would take to get back to Wyoming as fast as possible. He only wished the phones were working so he could call home and check on Nikki and Eddie.

I hope they’re safe and nothing is wrong with Eddie.

He knew he was hoping for a lot, but hope is all that would keep him going until he could find out for sure if anything had happened to them. Nikki is smart, he thought, but would she be smart enough to save herself and Eddie from crazy people like he had just seen on the street here? He could only hope.

They devised a plan of escape and decided the backdoor would be the best way out. Bobby and Frank grabbed some supplies from the gift shop along with some knifes from the kitchen while Betty grabbed some snacks and put them in a bag.

They agreed to take turns carrying the bag so one person would not have the burden of being stuck with it the entire trip. It would be a long trip walking out of the city, but the first chance they would get, Frank suggested they would find an SUV or a large sedan to drive that was not blocked in. They would have to take side roads to avoid the slew of crashed cars on the main roads. It wasn’t like people thought to themselves,
jee, I’m about to lose my marbles and start eating people. I better find a good place to pull over.
Only in a perfect world.

All four of them felt like they had been walking for days just to get over the Shelby Street Bridge and out of the city. Troy felt like it was taking longer before the alcohol started wearing off. Betty wanted to scold Troy, but she doesn’t know what kind of people her and Frank had just teamed up with. They could be escaped convicts for all she knows. She doesn’t want to end up going head first over the bridge and into the dark and deep Cumberland River just for giving a smart remark to some guy they just met. So she kept her mouth shut and did her best to ignore Troy while he sobered up.

“I’m surprised we haven’t ran into any crazy people,” said Frank. Of course, he would speak too soon and ruin such an easy walk out of the downtown area. Right around the last few syllables of his jinxing statement, a herd of angry and unforgiving crazies seemed to appear out of nowhere. If they had all been paying attention instead of thinking about how shitty of a trip it was going to be just to get to where the roads were remotely clear, they would have realized the bloodthirsty mob had come from behind a large thrift store.

Most of the crazy people were covered in blood from their chin down to their waste. They all growled and hissed the same, but they were off sync with each other. They apparently had no musical skills nor had been in a choir before. It sounded like some garbage that is played on the radio these days. Another crappy song about smoking pot or whatever it is kids sing about now. Interestingly enough, you could say this bunch of gorging lunatics had the munchies something terrible. The group was small, but they looked like they could do some damage to Frank, Betty, Bobby, and Troy. There were four women, a boy of about twelve, and five large men who looked like construction workers. The boy carried a severed arm in his hands that he had shoved between his teeth. He ate as he walked and his growling rumbled out of his mouth and across the flesh of the severed arm. It was a muffled sound, but fell right in line with the sounds coming from the others who staggered alongside of him.

“Look!” yelled Bobby. “They’re coming right at us!” It didn’t matter how loud or soft Bobby had said it, the herd of bloodsuckers seemed to be able to smell them a mile away. They had come right out from behind the building in a straight B line for them. “We need to get a move on it and now.”

“No shit,” screamed Troy. “I ain’t waiting to say hello nor goodbye.” Troy took off running in a drunken jog, passing up Frank and Betty who were walking slightly ahead of Bobby.

Betty froze in her place and would have stayed there if Frank had not been paying attention. He grabbed her arm in a frenzy and broke her feet loose from the pavement. Betty’s mouth hung open as she looked over to the herd that was quickly approaching them. Frank kept pulling her and yelling, “Come on honey! You have to run! They’ll get us!”

It must have been the luckiest part of their eventful day when Bobby spotted a short yellow school bus with DAVIDSON COUNTY SCHOOLS printed on the side, sitting around thirty yards ahead of them. “Let’s get in that bus,” he yelled. No one asked the obvious question, but instead ran straight for the bus. They would all get the answer once Bobby put his hand around the ignition to turn the key. “Is there a key?” That would be the question, but they could at least get inside of the bus to protect themselves from the hostiles coming at them.

The hostiles must not have gone totally stupid, because they could still run, which is what the twelve year old boy decided to do when he dropped the severed arm to his side and started after them. The boy looked back at the other hostiles, growled something in their growling language, which got the others running with him. Bobby looked back to judge how far they had gotten away from the herd thinking they were safe, but that thought quickly vanished from his head when the boy was only ten feet behind him. Bobby could smell the blood that had soaked onto the boy’s shirt. Any closer and the boy could leap at him and take him down. Bobby was scared at the thought of the boy getting any closer to him. After watching so many horror movies and reading so many paperbacks about zombies and vampires, Bobby could only assume that if he got bit by one of the hostiles, it might turn him the same way. Isn’t that what happened to those people on that TV show? He was not about to stick around and find out. The bus is only five yards away now and the boy is closing in fast.

Troy made it in the bus first. Betty and Frank quickly followed behind, nearly tripping on the steps going inside. Bobby got to the door, but something made him stop for a quick look. The hostiles were already approaching the bus. Bobby froze, his nerves tensed up and he couldn’t move his legs. He was somehow mesmerized at the sight of psychos coming at him. They were closer now. The boy leaped at Bobby.

A hand reached out from the bus and grabbed Bobby by the red and black-checkered flannel shirt he wore. The boy hit the ground face first, sending his front teeth bolting out of his mouth in a blood spattered mess as Bobby was pulled inside the bus. The door slammed shut as the hostile crowd rammed up against it. Blood smeared on the clear glass of the door. The loud banging of fists and faces against the steel panels of the bus’s sides were agonizing to the ears. With each pounding they gave, a bloody fist print was left, smudging red with the yellow paint. The bus rocked back and forth, nearly rising off the wheels on each side as it rocked. Inside the bus is fresh meat and the crazy-ass people will do anything to get it.

Bobby had fallen against the inside steps of the bus and looked up to see Troy sitting in the driver’s seat, holding the keys in his hand and smiling. He rattled them back and forth, showing off how lucky they were. Frank had been the one to grab Bobby and pull him to safety. With another helping hand from Frank, Bobby stood up in the aisle of the bus and looked out the window to see the boy had gotten up and was now beating on the bus with the others. He saw no pain in the boy’s face nor did he see any front teeth for that matter.

“Stop shaking those keys,” yelled Frank, “and let’s go. I don’t want to die here.” He sat down in one of the seats, not paying attention how close he had gotten to the window. He started screaming hysterically as one of the construction workers jumped up and shoved his arm through the bus window and grabbed Frank’s hair. “Help! Help!” The construction worker pulled a chunk of hair out of Frank’s head, but got a second grip with more hair and held on.

“Frank!” Betty ran to Frank and grabbed the construction worker’s hand. It was a big hand with a monstrous hold. She tried to break the fingers lose as the construction worker banged Frank’s head against the window, splintering the glass down the middle. His head made a thumping sound like a basketball on a gym floor with each bash it made against the window. Blood spurted from his temple as speckles of glass shattered away and stuck to the side of his face. Betty held on with all her might, but the construction worker was mightier. Obviously, years of using a jackhammer and carrying lumber from point A to point B gave him the strength in his grip he needed to pull Frank out of his seat and nearly out of the window.

Bobby turned to Troy and punched his shoulder to get him to unlock his eyes from the situation developing in the middle of the bus. “Start the damn thing,” yelled Bobby. “Let’s go.” Troy started the engine with no trouble and pulled the gearshift selector to “D” and punched the gas pedal to the floor with his foot. The herd of hostiles outside of the bus continued to beat on the sides with their bloody fists even as the bus began to pull away. The construction worker holding on to Frank’s hair must have realized Bobby’s intention of speeding away. This prompted the worker to reach in with both hands, successfully pulling Frank’s body through the window. Betty grabbed his shirt, but it did no good. The fabric ripped as easily as newspaper. Frank screamed in hysterics as he fell to the ground beside the bus. He bicycled his feet as he tried to stand to make a getaway, but it did no good.

“Stop!” Betty said. She ran to the front of the bus and reached for the lever to open the folding door.

Bobby grabbed Betty around the waist and pulled her away from the exit. “Don’t do it Betty. They’ll kill you, too.”

“No! I want my Frank.” Betty kept trying to pull away from Bobby as she reached for the lever to open the door. “No! No! No!” Her knees trembled and a sick feeling over took her stomach. Her head was bursting with pain. She fainted and fell limp in Bobby’s arms. Bobby looked out of the emergency exit window at the rear of the bus and watched as the herd of hostiles enjoyed their lunch, chowing down on poor Frank’s body. Frank’s screams quickly faded away as the bus drove further down the road, headed north.

“Is she still alive?” asked Troy. He kept his foot glued to the floor, swerving the steering wheel left and right to avoid abandoned cars and the occasional body lying in the middle of the street. The traffic lights worked as though nothing had happened, but Troy didn’t bother to slow and look each direction as he blew through red light after red light. The chances of another car coming down the street were slim to none.

“She fainted,” said Bobby, as he laid her across the front seat of the bus. “Slow down before you kill us.” Bobby looked out of the front windshield at all the cars that Troy kept coming dangerously close to.

“We’re not going to hit anything. There’s no one else on the road except for us.” Troy turned his head and looked back at Bobby. He kept his head turned for a long while until Bobby looked up from Betty and caught him staring.

As Bobby looked up and noticed Troy, a walking figure caught his eye in front of the bus. They were approaching too fast to slow down for whatever it was they were going to hit. “Look out!” yelled Bobby, but it was too late. Just as Troy jerked his head back around and looked out of the windshield, two loud thumps came from underneath the bus as the bus bounced slightly with each thump. Troy slammed the brakes, sending Bobby falling forward against the windshield and Betty into the floorboard beneath the front seat.