Sometimes We Ran (Book 2): Community
Community
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This version was published on 2014-01-15
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To my sister, one of my earliest fans.
One Year and One Month After the Zombie Apocalypse
There are times during the zombie apocalypse when you must run.
This was one of those times. Me and my road companion, Claire, were now running for our lives from three very hungry Red-Eye zombies. We had been scrounging for supplies in an old store when we came upon a nest of about half a dozen of the dead bastards resting in the back room.
I pulled my gun and dispatched two. Claire took out one with her weapon of choice, an aluminum baseball bat. One good swing, and she caved its head in. Then, three more got caught in the door like some kind of vaudeville comedy team. Not wanting to be overrun, we took off, with the three monsters right behind us.
Now we were running at full speed down a dusty road with hell bearing down behind us. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder. The three zombies were just keeping up with us, neither falling behind or trying to catch up. Their plan was simple. They would wait for us to get exhausted, then they would pounce on us.
Then they would feed.
The road ahead had no cover. There weren’t even any abandoned cars or buildings to duck into. The store we had been checking for supplies was the only structure around, and it was full of undead. There was simply no place to hide. Claire and I were surrounded by deep, foreboding forest. We would have to use the woods to escape. It was the only way out. I just hoped nothing else horrible lurked in the trees.
I looked at Claire. She was running at full speed with her head down, her small legs churning. As if she could read my mind, she looked up for some guidance on what to do next. I pointed toward the dark forest, and possible salvation. We turned in unison at the first gap, and headed into the trees.
Almost immediately, the sunlight dimmed and the temperature cooled. Warmer weather had returned a few weeks before and the afternoon temperatures were starting to climb a bit. The coolness of the forest was almost refreshing. I could smell the decaying leaves beneath our feet. I wished we could stop to enjoy it. I shot a fleeting glance backward to check on our pursers. They had followed us into the woods and were hell-bent on making us a meal.
I could feel myself getting tired. The chase was taking a toll on my middle-aged body. A slight numbing pain began to radiate from my legs and lower back. I sensed that Claire was beginning to fade as well. Even though she was half my age, a lack of food had left us a little weak from poor nutrition. I was tempted to tell her to run on and I’d catch up later. I knew full well that the Red-Eyes would surround me like a wounded deer and then eat me. Claire knew that too; she would never leave me behind.
It was time to fight.
I put on a burst of speed and cut off Claire. I grabbed her hand, and pulled her into a hiding place behind a large group of trees. We leaned back and made ourselves as small as possible.
“What are we doing?” Claire said, between huge gulps of air.
“We’re not going to get away. We can’t outrun them, and they won’t get tired,” I said, trying to control my breathing. I drew my handgun and peeked around the tree. A light breeze tickled the trees above me, causing the branches to sway and the leaves to make noise. The birds chirped happily, unaware of the drama unfolding below.
The three Red-Eyes stopped a few feet away. They seemed to be confused. They lifted their heads and sniffed the air in unison, trying to find us. Claire and I have found that the Red-Eyes had developed an excellent sense of smell and hearing. If Claire and I were quiet, we might have a chance to take them out.
Couldn’t do much about masking our smell. Neither of us had a bath in a while.
I watched from our hiding place as the undead looked around. They slowly got closer to the tree. One of the trio caught a scent and ran off in another direction, disappearing into the woods and leaving the other two behind. The trio was now a pair. The odds were at least a little more in our favor.
One of the two remaining Red-Eyes began to approach the tree. The other one stood a few yards away, beating the bushes. I tensed and waited for my chance.
I turned to Claire. “Get ready to run,” I whispered. She nodded, and got her bat ready.
The nearest Red-Eye continued to sniff the air, and approach our hiding place. It was a young one, a teen-age girl who had been about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was tracking us, but hadn’t seen us yet. She got close to the tree and began to walk around it looking down at the ground. It was time to counter-attack.
She looked up, and I put a bullet in her face. She screeched and fell down at my feet, dead. Her dying screams had alerted her companion, a young male in a tattered hospital gown. He hissed in my general direction and came at me. I got off another shot, but it hit him on the shoulder. It’s very hard to shoot when you are running.
Claire had taken off at the first shot. She slowed a little so I could catch up to her, and we started to run again at full speed. The little break at the tree had done us good. Although not fully refreshed, we had both caught a second wind. My shot had slowed the last Red-Eye down. We might have a chance.
Claire ducked into the weeds and onto a gravel path in the woods and I followed. We ran a few yards into a power-line easement. The trees and brush had been clear-cut for huge metal towers to carry main transmission lines from some far away power plant. There was no cover.
“Dammit!… Sorry. Now what do we do?” Claire said.
I could hear our undead friend thrashing through the woods coming down the path. Soon it would be face-to-face with us. “Go wide. Stand over on that side. If he goes for you, kneecap him with the bat.” Claire often incapacitated our adversaries by slamming her bat into their knees.
“What about you?” she said, as she put some distance between us.
“I’ll put a bullet in his head,” I said, getting ready for battle.
The Red-Eye broke into the clearing and stopped a few feet from our position. He stared at us both and sized up the situation. After a few seconds, he made a decision.
He started going after Claire: my one-hundred-and ten pound, five-foot-nothing, zombie-wrecking machine.
She didn’t flinch, but stood her ground with her bat ready. The Red-Eye approached with foam dripping from the sides of his mouth, growling like some kind of mad dog. When he got close enough, he lunged. Claire was too small and too fast. She avoided his attack, and side stepped away from his reaching, greedy hands and flashing jaws. In one fluid motion, she swung down with the bat and made contact with his knees.
The zombie yelped and tumbled to the ground. The blow to the knees had done something to the joint, and he tried to crawl away from his ultimate fate. Now it was my turn.
I walked up, with gun in hand, preparing to put him out of his misery. I aimed at the center of his head and started to pull the trigger. The undead monster flipped over on his back and raised his arms in self-defense. I paused at this strange behavior. The Red-Eye was on the ground with its hands in front of its face. I had never seen one behave like this. It knew it was going to die.
It almost acted alive.
“What are you waiting for, John? Kill it!” Claire yelled from behind me.
I pulled the trigger and put a bullet in its head. It slumped down to the gravel with a large hole in its forehead. Dark blood, black as night, began to leak onto the groomed gravel path.
“Why’d you hesitate?” Claire asked, brushing herself off.
I was still a little shocked by the zombie’s behavior. It took a few seconds for me to answer. “Don’t know.” I managed to say. “It put its hands up like it was begging for its life.”
Claire poked the corpse with her bat. “Yeah… I saw that too. Creepy.”
I looked down at the dead Red-Eye. They managed to look less fearsome when they were dead. Maybe it was their eyes turning pink in death that did it. “Must have been a reflex. Something it remembered when it was living.”
“Yeah,” Claire said, not convincingly. “Just a reflex.”
We turned and walked quickly away from the corpse. It was best to get through the cleared area as fast as possible. There was still one more Red-Eye in the forest somewhere, looking for us. If it caught us out in the open, we might be out of luck.
Claire and I crossed the easement without incident, only pausing at the huge metal towers to take a water break. I grimly noted to myself that we only had two bottles of water left to quench our thirst. Without water, this was going to be a short apocalypse.
Claire winced as she tried to flex her hip. She held onto a small fence and tried to stretch her leg to alleviate whatever pain or cramp she was feeling. Her hip had been injured in a scooter crash a few months back, and it didn’t heal properly. Not too many doctors around in a world full of zombies.
I watched her stretch for a second. It was obvious she was in a little pain. “You okay? Does your hip hurt?”
She looked up, and brushed her pink-highlighted auburn hair out of her hair. It was a little greasy from weeks on the road running from monsters. “I’m okay. Only hurts when I run.”
We started to walk toward the other side of the clearing. The lack of a hum from the overhead power lines was a little unsettling. The civilized world might never get back to normal. “I’m just a little worried about your mobility,” I said. “I’m a little too old to carry you.”
Claire giggled a little. I always loved to hear her laugh. “I can still outrun you, old man.” As to prove her point, she took off like a scared rabbit toward the other side of the easement.
“Claire! Wait!” I took off after her, but couldn’t catch up. Even with an injured hip, she was still pretty quick. I watched her dive into the tree line and disappear. I ran in after her. She knew we needed to stay together. I ran through the forest, and came upon an access road. A large building loomed across the road from me. It looked like a store or a mall. Might make some good cover. “Claire! Where are you?” I called out.
“Over here.” Claire was already approaching the building, looking for a way in. “I think it’s a mall. Can we check it out?”
“Just wait a minute. I’ll be right there.” I jogged across the road and joined her. “You know better than that. We need to stay together. What if something was in the woods?” I scolded Claire like she was a schoolgirl, but she knew the rules.
“Sorry. Now can we go inside?”
As our weeks on the road dragged on, Claire and I had become experts on entering and checking out abandoned buildings. We approached them like a two-man army unit, making sure everything was clear and that we had an escape route in case we had to flee. In a few buildings, we had encountered nests of undead. They grouped together, waiting to go out and hunt. Disturbing a nest was not a good idea. It was almost like poking a nest full of fire ants. It was a good way to get overrun and dead in a hurry. Some of the buildings also contained zombie-dogs as well. The dogs were the worst. If we saw any evidence of dogs, we usually moved on.
Claire and I walked around the building looking for a way in. During our tour of the back wall of the stores, we found an open loading-dock door. There was a decomposed body lying on the dock. A single Yellow-Eye zombie cruised the lot in front on the dock door. Yellow-Eyes were a little dumber and slower than the Reds. If he was alone, it might not be too bad.
I holstered my gun and drew my modern tomahawk. The chrome-plated steel glinted in the afternoon sun. I decided to go hand-to-hand to save a little ammunition, another essential commodity lately in short supply. “Ready?” I said to Claire.
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
We put some distance between us and started towards the open door. The Yellow-Eye saw us and began to shamble in our direction. It was badly decomposed, and didn’t look like much of a threat, but it was in our way. I got close and swung the pointed end of the tomahawk at its rotting head. The point went right through its forehead into its brain, snuffing whatever spark made these things move around. The zombie fell to the ground dead, without a struggle. I pulled my tomahawk out and moved on to the dock.
Claire and I took positions at the door. I took out my flashlight and shined the weak light into the dark space beyond. It was nearly out of juice: I guess we can add batteries to the list of consumables. I moved the light around and saw nothing moving. I lifted my head and took a long sniff. Sometimes you could smell the Red-Eyes coming before you saw them. The sniff revealed only a dank, wet odor coming from the store.
I nodded Claire inside. She readied her bat and stepped into the dark room. I followed, with tomahawk drawn. We took a few steps,and bumped into a tall human-like figure standing in the doorway. Claire attacked it with her bat. The sound of ringing aluminum echoed off the walls.
After the attack, Claire stepped back to catch her breath. “What the hell was that?”
I shined my weak flashlight at our adversary. The weak brown light revealed a smiling plastic face and a smooth forehead with a gaping baseball bat-sized wound. Claire had killed a mannequin.
“You killed a dummy from the store, kiddo. I guess we’re safe now.” In spite of the tension, I laughed a little.
“Very funny. Scared the hell out of me.”
We made our way out of the stockroom into the store, and then stepped into the mall. Claire and I stood in wonder at what we found. I turned off my flashlight, as we were not going to need it.
The upper floor and roof of the mall had partially collapsed. It had destroyed most of the mall, leaving a gaping hole where stores had been. Only the small store Claire and I walked through and a few more in the corner behind us remained. The rest was a big pile of twisted metal, glass, and other miscellaneous debris. Sunlight streamed in from the open hole in the roof.
“Oh my God,” Claire said under her breath.
“The mall is gone. Just gone…” My voice trailed off into a whisper. It was hard to take in all the destruction.
“What the hell happened?” Claire said, as she turned around to view the damage. “Looks like a bomb went off.”
“Don’t know. Maybe water or weather caused it to fall.” I looked down at the ground and noticed a few puddles of dirty water. “Maybe a blocked drain or two. Water builds up, and there goes the roof.”