The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World (11 page)

Then they both found out where the Down Boys go.

* * *

(Part Two)

The Rising

Day Twenty

Melbourne, Australia

Leigh Haig opened the dumpster lid a fraction of an inch and stared outside. Dark, ominous clouds dominated the sky, and cold rain fell in sheets. A flock of birds wheeled overhead, buffeted by the gale force winds. The storm lashed them, sending molted feathers and shreds of rotting meat plummeting downward with the rain. He remembered peeking out the window of his home before he’d departed, and seeing the sun. Now, he couldn’t remember what the sun looked like.Twelve days ago, he’d left his house in search of medicine for his wife Penny, whose body was being ravaged by the common flu. The sun was still shining when he departed. Now, it was raining, and he was hiding inside a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant, less than ten kilometers from home.

Ten kilometers. Not far. Not far at all. And yet, it might as well be the other side of the world.

Shivering from the cold, Leigh closed the lid. The darkness surrounded him again. His fingers and toes were numb, and his muscles ached. He felt for the rifle, a Yugoslavian-made SKS with a bayonet mounted on the barrel. He drew the weapon to him. Twelve days ago, he hadn’t even known how to fire it, let alone the rifle’s specifics. Now, it was his best friend. His teddy bear, after sleeping in the dumpster overnight.

After leaving the house, Leigh had gone one and a half blocks before encountering his first zombie, an elderly woman whose wig had gone missing and whose varicose veins had burst right through her skin. He’d smelled the creature before he saw it, and had time to hide behind the burned-out shell of a car before the corpse rounded the corner and started down his street. Armed only with a makeshift axe, Leigh had let it wander by. When the coast was clear, he continued on his way.

That was when the snake bit him.

He’d felt a sharp, jabbing pain in his ankle, and when he looked down, there was a snake clinging to his foot, its fangs piercing his sock and the flesh beneath it.

Leigh screamed, and that attracted the attention of the zombie that he’d just eluded.

The snake was already dead. Maggots squirmed in the open, ulcerated sores all along its body. One eye was missing, and more maggots filled that cavity. Muscles, free of rigor mortis, flexed as it clamped down tighter against his skin. It glared at him with its one good eye, and Leigh saw a dreadful intelligence reflected there.

He swung with his axe—two kitchen knives embedded in a wooden mallet. The blade sliced through the snake’s mid-section, cutting it in half, scattering maggots and innards. A dead mouse spilled out onto the road, the serpent’s last meal. Then the mouse began to move as well. Leigh stomped on the zombie rodent with his free foot. Tiny bones crushed beneath his heel.

The snake’s upper half held on to his ankle. Its severed end whipped back and forth like an out-ofcontrol fire hose. Leigh swung again, carving another six inches from its body.

The other zombie, the old woman with the missing wig, ran towards him.

“Come here, lad. I’m hungry!”

With the snake still clinging to his leg, Leigh planted his feet and watched the zombie’s charge. His heart pounded in his chest. As it reached for him, he swung the axe with all his might. The blade buried itself in the center of the old woman’s bald skull, cleaving flesh and bone. The zombie collapsed to the pavement, blood and brains leaking around the weapon.

Leigh tried to retrieve the axe, but it was stuck. He heard more of the undead approaching, and cursed, tugging on the handle.

* * *

Suddenly, automatic gunfire rang out. Seconds later, an armored jeep pulled alongside him. The side-door opened, and a man with a red beard leaned out, offering Leigh his hand. “Come with us if you want to live, mate.”

Leigh jumped onboard.

There were four people in the jeep—two soldiers, a woman, and the red-bearded man. All of them were heavily armed.

“You’ve brought a friend,” the woman said, nodding at Leigh’s leg. “Lucky it’s not poisonous.”

The red-bearded man leaned over, pried the snake from Leigh’s ankle, and tossed it out the window. “We’ll have to get that doctored. Fucking things are crawling with bacteria.”

“I need a doctor,” Leigh stammered. “Medicine. My wife, Penny, she’s sick.”

“You’re in luck,” one of the soldiers said. “We’re from Box Hill. A bunch of us have holed up in the hospital.”

Leigh soon learned that forty survivors, mostly medical staff and military forces, were living inside the hospital. After arriving, a doctor fixed Leigh’s ankle and gave him something for the infection. But before Leigh could convince anyone to accompany him home to get Penny, the hospital fell under siege from the zombies.

He got a crash course in combat weapons training, was given the SKS and plenty of ammunition, and assigned a position on the barricades. The siege lasted eleven days before the undead finally broke through. By then, the survivors’ numbers had dwindled to ten, and their dead companions had wreaked as much havoc inside the facility as the zombies outside.

As the creatures stormed the hospital, Leigh stuffed a sack with vials of antibiotics, a few bottles of water, and some candy from a vending machine. He grabbed his rifle and extra ammunition, and fled through an unguarded fire door. He made it two blocks before being forced to hide inside the dumpster.

And now here he was.

“I’ve got to get home,” he said aloud. “I promised Penny that I’d be back.”

He lay there in the garbage, cold and wet and miserable, until it was dark. Then he crept out of the dumpster and, using the darkness and the rain for cover, walked out of the alley.

The downpour immediately soaked through his clothing, and he was drenched before he’d gone a dozen steps. The rain blinded him, but Leigh hoped that it would lessen the zombie’s visibility as well. Leigh Haig wasn’t a religious man, not after everything he’d seen these last twenty days, but he prayed now.

“Please Lord, if you really are still up there, just let me make it home. Let me get back to Penny without meeting any of those things.”

Thunder rumbled across the sky.

Leigh walked all night, and whether it was the weather, or the darkness, or someone really answering his prayer, he didn’t encounter a single zombie. Shortly before dawn, he reached the estate their home was located in. His legs ached and his feet were blistered from his wet shoes rubbing against them on the long walk home. His nose was running and he’d developed a chronic cough.

Despite his misery, Leigh smiled when he passed by the little park where he and Penny often walked. His smile broke into relieved laughter when he caught sight of their home. The two-story brick house was just as he’d left it, complete with the red X on the door.

“Penny…”

Leigh broke into a run. He fumbled for his keys, slid them into the lock with trembling fingers, and burst inside.

“Penny? I’m home!”

There was no answer. The couch was empty, the blankets tossed onto the floor.

“Penny?” he called out again, his voice cracking.

“Where are you?”

Leigh sat the rifle and sack down on the floor and began to search the house.

Please, please, please let her be okay. Just let her be okay.

“Leigh?”

His spirits soared. She was alive! He ran to the stairs and started up them.

“I came back,” he shouted. “And I brought medicine. Just like I promised.”

“I know,”
Penny said.
“I knew you’d be back. I knew
you’d return.”

Leigh halted halfway up the stairs. Something stank, and he heard flies buzzing.

* * *

“Well,”
the voice continued,
“I didn’t know. But
your wife did. I saw it in her mind when I took over this
husk. She believed in you. She knew you’d keep your
promise.”

Leigh glanced back downstairs at his SKS. It seemed to him that the weapon was ten kilometers away, like everything else from his journey.

“Penny…”

The thing that had been his wife stepped into the light.

“She knew you’d come back,”
the zombie slurred.

“So I waited.”

Leigh Haig’s tired legs gave out beneath him, and he could walk no more.

* * *

The Rising

Day Twenty-One

Lynchburg, Virginia

“Chapter fifteen, verse twelve, tells us; ‘Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?’”

Chris Shackelford rolled his eyes. “God, I’m getting sick of this shit.”

“I thought you two were Christians?” Klinger looked up at the church basement’s ceiling.

“We are Christians,” Dawn Shackelford said, loading more hollow points into her .357 Ruger.

“But what’s going on upstairs isn’t worship. It’s blasphemy.”

Klinger nodded. “Word. Few days ago, I met two guys traveling north, to Jersey. Jim Thurmond and a preacher named Martin. I was never much for church either, but that Martin was cool. Not like Reichart. That guy’s fucking crazy, man.”

“So we agree?” Chris asked. “We’re really going to do this?”

“I’m in,” Klinger said. “But this is your town. Where we gonna go?”

Chris handed Klinger the side-by-side Browning 12 gauge, and double-checked his Sig Sauer P228 9mm. “Basement of an empty house? Grocery store? Another church?”

Klinger snickered. “I’ve had enough church.”

Lynchburg was home to Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. The famous minister had his hand in everything, dictating all that happened. As a result, the town had more churches than anywhere in America.

“But if there is no resurrection of the dead,”

Reichart’s voice thundered from upstairs, “then is Christ not risen; and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith in vain?”

“They’ll come looking for us soon,” Dawn warned. “We’ve been gone too long.”

Klinger’s face turned pale. “Probably nail us up on one of those crosses, just like the others who dissented.”

“Let’s do this, then.” Chris took his wife’s hand and squeezed. “You okay?”

Dawn shook her head. “No, I’m not. Look at us, Chris. We’ve changed. You were an accountant for Genworth Financial. I taught fifth grade math and history. I played the violin for twenty-six years. Gardening, target shooting—and now…”

“You can really shoot?” Klinger asked.

“She can put a grouping of six tight enough to cover with the bottom of a soda can.” Chris pulled Dawn close and kissed her forehead. “Things have changed, honey. You know that. It’s not the same world out there. We’ve got to worry about us.”

“What about the others. Are we just going to let Reichart and his followers do this?”

“He’s probably killed them already. Right now, they’re turning into zombies.”

“But what if they’re not,” Dawn whispered.

“What if they’re still alive on those crosses?”

“We don’t have a choice. It’s just us now. Mom, Dad, Bryan, your folks, April, even Scotch and Sandy—they’re all gone. We’ve got to live. Me and you.”

“And me,” Klinger added.

Chris grinned. “Yeah, and our new friend Klinger, the ex-pro surfer.”

Weapons drawn, they left the Sunday school rooms and crept up the stairs. Reichart’s mesmerizing voice swelled louder as they entered the narthex.

“See now, brothers and sisters. See how they rise! Behold the mystery. There were asleep, and now they are changed.”

“Release me.”

The raspy voice from behind the sanctuary doors wasn’t the preacher’s or anyone in the congregation. It belonged to something dead.

Finger to his lips, Chris led them to the front door. Heavy pews had been stacked atop one another to form a barricade. While Dawn covered them, Klinger and Chris sat their guns aside and lifted the top pew.

* * *

Inside the sanctuary, someone screamed. Startled, Chris lost his grip. The pew crashed to the floor, reverberating throughout the building. Reichart stopped in mid-sermon. A second later, the sanctuary doors banged open. Parishioners flooded into the narthex, wide-eyed.

Dawn raised her pistol. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to leave.”

Inside the sanctuary, Reichart shouted, “Who dares disturb the resurrection?”

“It’s the Shackelford’s,” a man yelled. “And that stranger we let in earlier in the week. Say they’re leaving.”

The preacher squawked. “Oh, no they aren’t. Bring them to me.”

Chris and Klinger sprang for their guns. Several more members of the congregation poured through the sanctuary doors.

“Get back,” Dawn warned, spacing her feet apart. “I
will
shoot you.”

“You won’t kill us, sister.” The speaker was a fat man, an atheist four weeks before, now one of Reichart’s most fervent followers. His eyes darted from the gun to Dawn’s breasts. He licked his lips. Dawn shot him between the eyes. Her wrists snapped backward from the recoil. She drew a bead on the next.

The fat man collapsed. Some of the believers rushed them while others ducked back inside the sanctuary. Dawn and Chris opened fire, dropping six attackers in as many shots. Klinger fumbled with his weapon, and the crowd fell on him, dragging him inside.

Chris and Dawn pursued them into the sanctuary. At the front, twelve makeshift crosses had been mounted around the communion rail. Former members of the congregation—those who’d spoke out against Reichart—hung crucified, their throats cut. Blood still jetted from the fresh wounds. The corpses twitched, reanimating.

“They were asleep,” Reichart shrieked, “and now they are changed. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed!”

Chris grabbed Dawn’s arm. “Let’s go! We’re too late.”

“Klinger.” She shook him off. “We can’t just—”