Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness (12 page)

David Miller, on top of his van, swung his
baseball bat at the nearest zombie’s hand. There was crack of wood against dry
skin and brittle bone, the hand crumpling in retreat. More hands replaced it.
He swung his bat again.

Crack.

Fwack.

Crack.

Snap.

An arm pulled away, a broken ulna causing it to
hang at a nauseating angle, like a limp flag on a crooked flagpole.

“Daddy!”

He spun to see his youngest daughter’s ankle in
the grip of one of the undead horde. With a flashing rage before his eyes, he pounced,
bringing the bat down hard on the zombie’s head. Its head slung back, but its
grip tightened. He swung again. Again. He reared up to swing again, but as he
was bringing the bat down a fourth time, the head disappeared. Instead, there
was just a stump of rotten neck meat and a thick sludge of coagulated blood. He
watched as another head disappeared. This time the flashing of a blade caught
his eye. His tunnel vision began to recede and as it opened up, he saw four
people hacking and slashing away at the crowd of dead. They circled around the
van, always moving, keeping the zombies pinned against the metal frame. It was
over in minutes. Decapitated heads and loose limbs were scattered around the
perimeter of the van. One of the people was talking to David, but he just saw
the man’s mouth move with no sound. The man looked slightly agitated and spoke
again.

“Hey man, I said y’all can come down now,” Lexx
repeated.

David Miller’s family understood the man and
began to climb down with the help of the others on the ground. First, his wife,
then his teen-aged daughter, and then finally, his little Anna-Belle. The man
on the ground looked at David expectantly.

“You comin’ down or not bro?”

David looked down at the ground and then back at
the man. The bald man raised an eyebrow and tapped his foot. He looked back at
David’s wife, Ellen, and shrugged his shoulders. She slowly walked back towards
the van. Her eyes met her husbands.

“David, come down. It’s okay. They saved us,”
her voice calm and reassuring.

David climbed down.

“Thata boy,” Lexx said, patting the man on the
back.

David jerked his shoulder away. Lexx held up
both hands and took a step back. Another one stepped up to David. He was a
younger guy, mid-twenties maybe.

“Hi, my name is Josh. This is Lexx and these are
our friends, Jeremy and Tori. Are y’all okay?”

David looked back at the minivan.

How long were we up there?
He thought.

He remembered coming around the turn and the mob
of zombies being there when they got there. He remembered quickly getting his
family out of the van and up on top. He remembered Ellen screaming, his
daughters crying. Before he climbed up top, he grabbed the baseball bat from
between the front two seats. It was the only weapon he had from the house. He
was never a gun guy and lived in a neighborhood where the landscaping was
provided. He didn’t own any tools. The baseball bat was it. The bat had sat
dormant since college, when David last played. Until now, it only collected
dust underneath his side of the bed, there in case a burglar broke into the
house.

He remembered the first swing and the bat
colliding with dead flesh. He remembered how good it felt and the red washing
over him. He remembered swinging again and again.

But why was I swinging?

He remembered.

Looking at his youngest daughter, barely over
six, he remembered. She clung to her dingy-white security blanket, he thumb
stuck in her mouth. She had almost broken the habit, it only returned in times
of great distress. Her eyes stayed focused on the ground before her.

David looked down at his daughter’s ankle.

Blood.

His heart sunk and his stomach turned in knots,
over and over. He raised his hand to his mouth, to hold back the vomit that
felt imminent. It never came. Tears began to well up in his eyes.

No, no, no…

He walked over to Anna-Belle. Kneeling down in
front of her, he put his hand above the wound on her leg. She broke her
concentration on with the ground and locked eyes with her daddy. He was crying.
He took a closer look at the now blackening wound around her ankle.

“She’s bitten,” he said, his voice barely over a
whisper.

Ellen began wailing. He knew it was the bite
that did you in. They had seen it before with his oldest, Katie’s boyfriend.
Fifteen and already a boyfriend. She was too young. David had hated Eric since
the first day Katie brought him home. He hated the way the creep would try to
glance down her shirt, to get peeks of her developing cleavage. She was just a
little girl. His baby.

So, when Eric came over the day of the outbreak,
bleeding from his neck from an open semi-circle wound, David was secretly
happy. He knew it was wrong, but he wanted that boy out of the picture. His
feelings did not change two hours later when Eric finally expired. And when the
boy got back up, David was there waiting with the baseball bat. He remembered
Katie crying and asking her father not to kill him, but the dead Eric eyed his
daughter the same way he did when he was alive. Like a piece of meat. David
remembered swinging the bat and sending brain matter flying against the wall.

Katie had not spoken since.

But now, as she hugged her little sister, she
could not stop talking.

“Oh, Annie. You’re going to be okay. You’re
going to be okay. Annie, it’s okay Annie, it’s okay…”

Katie flashed an angry look at her father. It
screamed, “Why did you let this happen?”

David in that moment felt powerless. He sat
there on his knees and watched as his wife and Katie held on tightly to his
little Anna-Belle.

I won’t be able to do it.

Eric had been easy; he had already hated Eric.
But Anna-Belle? How was he going to look into the little green eyes, of his
scarlet-haired baby and put her down? She looked so much like her mother,
beautiful in every way. How could he do it?

“I… I… Can’t do it,” he finally spoke.

He felt another hand on his shoulder, but this
time did not yank away.

“I know. I had to put my niece down after she
turned...”

“Your niece? This is my daughter dammit!” David
erupted.

He quickly stood up and got in Josh’s face.

“You want me to kill my daughter?”

The girls began crying harder behind him. Josh
stood his ground, not backing down from David’s aggression.

“She won’t be your daughter for much longer and
then you will have to act, or you will lose your whole family. It’s hard I
know, but unfortunately it’s the way things are now.”

David swung. Josh ducked, but not quick enough,
taking the punch to the top of his head. He recovered and threw his weight into
David, tackling him to the ground. The two men rolled, tussling on the ground,
until finally Josh pinned David. Josh swung, hitting David in the jaw. He swung
again and again and again, until Jeremy and Lexx pulled him off. David rolled
onto his side and spat blood out onto the asphalt. One eye was black and his
face was bruising up.

David looked at his family. They were terrified,
but they looked at him with…

What is that look?

Pity.

He groaned. Blood was slick against his face. He
stumbled up to his feet and in doing so, caught his reflection in the windows
of the van. His clothes were torn and ripped; his face bloodied and disfigured.
He let out a wheeze of pain and another groan.

He was one of them.

He was one of the undead.

“Leave us,” he said, from his tight jaw.

The four who stopped to help all exchanged
glances.

“I said, leave us!”

He stared at Josh through his one good eye. Josh
looked him up and down, and then walked back to his truck. He reached in and
came back with something in his hand.

It was a gun.

Josh released the clip and put it back into his
pocket. He then turned the pistol and handed the grip to David.

“You have one shot. Make it count.”

Josh then motioned for the others to follow him
back to the truck. They drove off as quickly as they arrived.

David looked down at the gun in his hand. It was
heavy and cold.

You have one shot. Make it count.

Ellen and Katie were still sobbing over
Anna-Belle, occasionally casting glances of pity towards David. The weight of
the gun continued to grow in his grip. Josh’s words echoed in his head.

You have one shot. Make it count.

He knew he would be unable to end the life of
his daughter. And if he waited for her to come back as one of those things,
would he be able to do it then? Would he be able to look into the dead, green
eyes of his baby girl and pull the trigger? How much more would Katie hate him
then? Maybe, maybe he could talk Ellen into it. She was stronger than he was;
she should do it.

Fucking coward.

You have one shot. Make it count.

“I can do this,” he mumbled, his family ignoring
him.

The gun suddenly no longer felt heavy in his
hand, but easily floated through the air as he lifted it. The movement was
effortless, as if this was the way things were meant to be.

Yes, this is it. I understand now. I have one
shot and I will make it count.

David placed the end of the barrel against his
temple.

“Ssh… Don’t be afraid. Daddy is going to fix
this…”

Ellen looked up to see what her husband was
babbling on about.

“NOOO!” She screamed.

But it was too late as David pulled the trigger
and made his shot count.

Lexx had been to Statesboro before. After
returning home from the Gulf and breaking it off with his fiancé, he came to
the college town to stay with a friend. He ended up hooking up with a co-ed and
spending most of the time in her dorm. A small grin crossed his face as he
remembered how flexible the girl was. She was a gymnast.

Tori shifted, pushing herself more into
Lexx’s lap. She turned her head and gave him a coy smile as she pushed her hips
into his lap.

“Stop it,” he whispered in her ear.

“Stop what? I’m uncomfortable,” she
replied.

He rolled his eyes and she turned back to
face forward.

As good as the gymnast was, he would not
trade what he had with Tori for anything. There was something real, something
tangible about their relationship. He hated to be cliché, but it was them
against the world. Isn’t that how every relationship should be? No matter what
you face, you will face it together? But what happens? Life? The day-to-day
activities and duties? You forget who your partner is. You forget that you’re a
team. He had that with Tori.

Then again, they were fighting off
walking corpses who were trying to eat them.

Not your average day to day.

But there was something about it, again,
that made things seem more real.

It made him think about the Gulf. Over
there, his senses were always on high alert. The smallest noise and he was
reaching for his weapon. A wrong feeling in his gut meant something. He was
always on, always ready to go. It was how he lived now. Yeah, being at the
cabin made him relax a little bit, but not too much. Always a part of him
waited for something to happen.

And not much had yet. Which to Lexx,
meant they were due.

***

They took the 301 Bypass around the city
as much as possible. Of course, downtown Statesboro wasn’t really much. If it were
not for the school, it would be no different from the other small, rinky-dink
towns nearby. There was an iconic Main Street, many of the buildings straight
from an Americana postcard. These streets were quiet, eerie. An occasional
zombie shambled out of an alleyway, but movement was scare.

“So, what do you guys think? Should we hit
the hospital or the medical school first?” Josh asked.

“I vote hospital,” Lexx said.

“Yeah, the medical school might not have
everything we need, so if we can knock it out in one shot, that would be
better,” Tori added.

“Hospital may be more populated,” Josh
reasoned.

“That’s true, but I think we can handle
it,” she said with a smile.

Josh returned the smile.

“Okay then. Hospital it is then.”

***

Twenty minutes later, they sat in the
parking lot in front of the hospital. It looked like a warzone, or a hospital
in a third-world country. The multi-leveled building towered over everything
else in the area. It had to have been the tallest building in the city. Windows
were broken out; smoke still smoldering from several of them. Cars were piled
up in front of the main entrance. They would have to find another way inside.

But the number of zombies wandering
around were surprisingly low. A silver lining of the possible shit-storm
waiting for them inside.

“Well,” Josh said, leaning forward in his
seat to get a better look at the building. “Y’all ready for this?”

“Let’s do it,” Tori said as she cocked
her sidearm.

“That was cool; can you say it like that
again?” Lexx asked.

“Shut up and let me out of this sardine
can,” she said.

They piled out of the cab and retrieved
their other weapons from the back of the truck. Once they were loaded out, Josh
looked at the building and then back at the group.

“Looks like we’ll have to find another
way in. Any suggestions?

“How about that big ass hole in the side
of the building?” Lexx said.

It was no understatement. To their left,
a major piece of wall was missing from the hospital exposing most of the first
floor and the bottom of the second. Scorch marks around the edges suggested an
explosion of some sorts.

“Looks good to me,” Josh said.

They entered into what appeared to be the
remnants of a gift shop. Fake flowers and burned teddy bears with “Get Well
Soon” stitched on their chests were scattered across the floor. A corpse was
slumped over the counter. The room smelled of burnt flesh.

“Geez, what died in here?” Lexx said,
followed by a chuckle.

“Wow, that was bad,” Jeremy said.

Lexx shrugged.

They exited the gift shop into the main
foyer. Bodies covered in white sheets lined the walkways. Other bodies were not
as fortunate. They were uncovered and well decomposed. The smell in the store
was pleasant compared the assault on the nostrils out here.

One of the bodies began to move.

A woman dressed in a half-open hospital
gown got to her feet. Her skin was black with rot. She opened her mouth and
forced a dry, hoarse moan from her vocal cords. Others began stirring.

Out of the many corpses that littered the
ground, only five were able to get to their feet. Two others only made it up
onto their bellies, pulling themselves towards a fresh meal. Their entrails
dragged behind them.

“Well,” Lexx said. “Guess we better say
hi.”

***

Jeremy sunk his machete into the skull of
the last dragger. The bone and tissue were so putrefied, that the blade slid in
like a warm spoon into a tub of ice cream.

There goes ice cream for me,
Jeremy thought.

He pulled the machete back and slung off
what gunk he could. It made a wet ‘thwack’ against the floor. He grimaced and
looked at Josh.

“What’s first on that list?” He asked.

“I’ve been thinking, it might be a good
idea for us to split up. Half of what we’ll need will be in the maternity ward
and the other half will be in the pharmacy. If we split up into two groups, we
can cover more ground and maybe get out of here sooner,” Josh said.

“Yeah, why not?” Jeremy said. “We’re all
white here. We should be safe.”

Lexx and Tori both laughed, but Josh
looked confused.

“What?” He asked.

Jeremy chuckled.

“Sorry man. Inside joke.”

Josh stared at him for a minute.

“So… are you going to tell me the inside
joke or not?” He asked.

This caused Jeremy and the other two to
burst into more giggles. Josh looked slightly annoyed, so Jeremy did his best
to pull himself together.

“Yeah, yeah, my bad,” he started.
“Remember when we told you about the SCAD shop? Well- Who was it? It was you
Tori, right? Tori suggests we split up, to cover more ground and Ben is all
like, no. His reasoning? The black guy always dies in the movies when everybody
splits up and he didn’t want that to happen to him. Funny, right?”

Josh slowly nodded his head. Jeremy could
see that he was itching to get out of there and back to the cabin, so he let it
slide that Josh didn’t find the story hilarious.

“Okay, serious time. Me and you can go to
the maternity ward. Lexx, Tori, y’all go check out the pharmacy,” Jeremy said,
reaching his hand out for Josh’s list.

He tore the list in half and handed the
medicine half to Tori. She took it and gave a nod to Lexx. The two of them
jogged off towards the directory on the far wall. Lexx scanned the list,
sliding his finger down the plaque until he hit the word, “Pharmacy”. He gave a
wave back to Jeremy and Josh, and then the two of them took off down the
hallway.

Jeremy turned back to Josh and gave him a
smile.

“You ready to get out of here, huh?”

Josh nodded.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Just worried
about being gone from the cabin. Can’t really explain why. Just a feeling I
can’t shake.”

“It’s cool man,” Jeremy said, putting his
hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Let’s go find your baby some stuff to be born with.”

***

The pharmacy was on the second floor.
There was a whole bunch of zombies on the second floor.

Tori cracked open the door from the
stairway. She peeked out and then quickly closed the door. The stairway was
dark, the only light from the two of the handful of glow sticks they brought
with them.

“There’s an ass of zombies out there,
Lexington,” she said.

“How much is an ‘ass’ exactly, Victoria?”

“A lot.”

He raised his eyebrow at her and pushed
her aside. Lexx then looked out the crack of the door and just as quickly
closed it.

“Yep. An ‘ass’ sounds about right,” he
said.

“Told ya.”

Tori pulled the AR-15 from around her
back where the gun hung. Lexx placed his hand on the barrel and shook his head.

“Easy there, Machine Gun Barbie,” he
said. “We don’t want to let the whole hospital know we’re here. Besides, Jeremy
and Josh have to make it to the sixth floor. We don’t want to cause them to not
get there.”

“So what do you suggest then? We just go
in there and take on thirty-something zombies with just your crowbar and my
hunting knife?” she asked.

“Well, it is a big knife…”

She smiled at him.

“Ugh. Fine. But if they get too close,
I’m gonna start shootin’,” she said, slinging the rifle back over her shoulder.

Lexx couldn’t help but let his eyes fall
to where the strap fell in between her cleavage.

“Can you just focus for one minute?” She
asked.

“My bad.”

He gave her a nod and she burst through
the door. The closest zombie turned slowly at the shape that just came through
the doorway. As he faced the quickly approaching woman, she dove her knife deep
into its forehead, sinking into the putrid remains of grey matter. Its black
eyes rolled back into its head as she pulled the blade back.

Moans and grunts filled the hallway.

Tori moved to the next zombie and
repeated the procedure. The knife went in and the zombie went down. As she
pulled the knife back, a dead hand reached out for her wrist, but was struck
down by Lexx’s crowbar. It looked at him with an apathetic rage. Lexx responded
by sinking the claw end into its face.

Tori did a quick head count. She was
exaggerating when she said thirty earlier, but now that she had a good look,
she realized she might not have been that far off. To take down that many
without the guns would be an extreme task. If she could just shoot something,
this would be over so much quicker.

“Stop thinking about it!” Lexx yelled as
he sunk the tip of his crowbar into another cranium.

“Stop thinking about what?” She yelled
back.

“About shooting that gun! I can see it
all over your face!”

“Ugh! You’re no fun!” she said, slashing
at a hand that got too close.

Several fingers fell to the floor. Their
owner didn’t seem to notice the missing phalanges. Its slack jaw dripped black
bile onto its chin, its eyes hungry. Tori jabbed the knife into its eye socket.
Dark juices burst from the ruptured eyeball as the blade sunk into its head.

Another crowbar swing.

Another stabbing of the knife.

Again.

And again, until finally it was all over.

The two of them stood there, breathing
heavily, surrounded by dozens of fallen zombies. Tori looked at Lexx. His shirt
was covered in blood.

“You got something on your shirt,” she
said in between breathes.

He looked down at himself and shrugged. 
He unstrapped the backpack from his back and set the shotgun and crowbar down
on the ground. He stripped the shirt off and threw it to the side.

Tori couldn’t help but giggle. Lexx had
lost the small beer gut he had when they first met. Who would have known that
underneath he had a great set of abs? She eyed him up and down, taking in the
tone of his muscular build. The hair on his chest was starting to fill back in.

“Hey, can you just focus for one minute?”
He said, as he picked up the bag and gun.

“My bad,” she said.

She began walking down the hallway, but
stopped when he grabbed her by the arm.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey what?”

“You have some blood on you too.”

She looked down and he was right. A smile
began to curl in around her lips. She reached around, grabbed the rifle, and
set it down.

Lexx watched as she started unbuttoning
her shirt.