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We were scavengin’ an old gas station for supplies and one got Tai. It came out of nowhere and just got him. None of us saw it comin’; or could do anything to stop it. We’d never been quite this far from home, but even though it’s only been a couple years, food is gettin’ harder and harder to find. We tried farmin’, but none of us ever had to grow our own food before. The most we ever could manage to harvest was a bite or two. Ever since those damned dogs started sharin’ whatever the Z’s have with the animals, we had to start goin’ back out there to find food.
No, it still can’t . . . you know, bring ‘em back. It just kills ‘em; dead. Well, if it can—reanimate the animals—we haven’t seen it. But, that’s not what I’m tellin’ you about. The thing just freakin’ bit him. It bit him and we were stuck, because that moron had the keys. He started screamin’ for us to help him and for us to do somethin’. Help? There’s no help for you after you get a bite taken out o’ya. A scratch, maybe, but when you’re bit, it’s all over. The only help we coulda given him woulda been to finish him off so he didn’t have to feel it eat him, and I would have; only we couldn’t spare the rounds nor invite the noise. Why didn’t he help us? He could’ve taken it all quiet like and not drawn so much attention to the rest of us. What an idiot.
How does one of them sneak up on you? You just forget we’re out there with ‘em? You just get comfortable? How do you not realize that that smell is rottin’ meat on wheels? I mean, the thing looked like it had been dead for months. The clothes it used to wear had turned to rags over that sickly grey-blue skin. I couldn’t even tell ya whether it used to be a man or a woman. Its hair used to be long, which makes me think it was a woman, but any beauty that used to be there had turned to pure evil in its ugliest. Most of what was a face was gone, leaving that twisted skeleton smile some of ‘em wear around.
That’s what happens to these things. They start to waste the same as anyone else that goes; only they don’t get et. Critters don’t like the taste or somethin’. You would think they’d be easy pickins for the lions and wolves, but you’d be wrong. Nothin’ normal wants any part of what those things got, only those micro parasite things. And that’s besides the smell. I know once you get back out there it’s everywhere, but it’s different. When a Zombie is right on top of you, it’s completely different. What a fool.
Anyway, we were stuck. We had no keys, and no way to get ‘em until that thing was done eatin’ him. Out of nowhere, this guy just walks up and starts talkin’ to it like it’s sellin’ lemonade or somethin’. We were about to break out of our skins, because this guy just strolls up to it with his hands in the pockets of that nice suit of his and says, “Enjoying yourself down there? Mind sharing a bite with a friend?”
That’s what he said. No, I’m not lyin’. That’s it word for word. I still don’t know how that Z snuck up on Tai, but nobody heard this guy comin’. He could’ve sneaked up on a deer in a field of dry twigs. He didn’t make a sound until he started runnin’ his mouth. Mind sharing a bite with a friend? Shit! Guy was out of his mind; had to be. Who wears a black double-vested suit, those shiny little shoes, and puts a bright-freakin’-red rose in their lapel, even before everything went to hell?
So, that’s how it started. And I’m not kiddin’ ya, that wasn’t even the weird part. Like they do, as soon as the guy made a sound it stopped chewin’ and froze, listenin’. Then he starts sayin’ what a pity it was—damned Z makin’ such a mess of a fine meal. Called it wasteful, ignorant. About this time, everybody’s frozen in place just watchin’, all of us about ready to freak out from all the noise this guy’s makin’, when the Z finally turns its head and stands up. Captain Fancy got this dumb look on his face like he completely expected that it was one of us gone man-eater.
You could almost see the cold hand of reality slap across his stupid face. Then he smiled. No kiddin’. Actually friggin’ smiled at the thing. Now, remember how I said that it wasn’t the weird part yet? Well, you know what? I got a good look at his face in the light when he smiled, and I shit you not, guy’s teeth were sharp as picks. Had no color to his skin either; just a smile, a zoot suit, and a prayer.
That’s when things got freakin’ strange. Like they do, the Z starts makin’ all kinds of noise. Clicks, pops, and groans and all goin’ after him. The guy almost turns away a little, then looks at it from the corner of his eye and shakes his head. Almost like it was some kinda sick joke someone was playin’ on him or somethin’. I figure that’s about the time he got serious, because he reached down and took his Rolex off, flicked off his pretty little fedora and dropped the watch in. The Z managed a few steps by this time, but he just crouches down and sets the hat upside-down on the ground next to him like it was his favorite pup come to see him. I still couldn’t figure out what was goin’ on, but I’m crappin’ in my slacks about now. When that thing was just barely more than an arm’s reach away, he strips off his jacket, folds it up all neat like next to the hat, and then stands up. That’s when everything went goat rope.
He didn’t have one patch of hair on his body, that I could tell, and his skin stood out whiter’n the Z’s was. His eyes went completely black—like, not a light in the back rooms of Perdition kinda black—and his hand moved faster than I’ve ever seen. He took the Z by the throat and lifted it off the ground. Absolutely. Just one handed that thing clear into the air. He cranes his neck around a bit and starts flappin’ his damned gums again; askin’ it questions and stuff, like: What are you? And Why aren’t you running? Tell ya what, if I wasn’t absolutely freakin’ petrified, I’da been running like the wrath of God was mowing me down on an American Quarter.
About that time, the Z wrapped the broken fingers of one of its hands around the guy’s wrist and dug in. It seems like they all manage to break a few fingers clean off and that leaves the bones sticking out all sharp and broken. I might be crazy, but it’s almost like they do it on purpose so they have somethin’ to poke holes in you with. Sometimes, I wonder if there’s more going on with ‘em than we know . . . Anyway, where was I? Fingers. Bones. Yeah, that’s it. So, it reached out and raked his face with the other hand while it worked to get grazin’ on the arm that was holding it and that’s when we heard the others.
See, we’ve learned that it’s not that they smell us as much as they hear us. Somehow those things got the ears of a cat and they can follow a sound for miles. When they get real close, they start smelling the air; breathing in through them holes where their noses used to be, and that’s why they moan. See, they gotta let all that air back out. Until they pick up a good, thick trail of stink, they do it so shallow they don’t make much sound at all, though. Yeah, we thought they was makin’ all that noise to tell their horrible little buddies to come to dinner, but we were wrong. They don’t give two shakes about each other. All they care about is making sure they’ve taken at least a bite out of every heart-beatin’ animal on this great big ol’ rock.
I guess the guy liked the way his face was lookin’ before, because when it scratched him, it really pissed him off. Strike me down for lying, but with just the one hand he tossed it against the wall like it was nothing. He wiped the putrescine from his cheek with his fingers and then gave it a sniff; and then another. I honestly think this guy had never seen a walker before in his life. In two steps, he covered the whole room and was on top of that Z. He grabbed what was left of its hair with his left hand and its throat in his right and gave a crazy-fast yank. The handful of hair ripped the scalp away where it had been rooted and the pop I heard meant the neck had snapped for sure. Not a lot of good that’ll do ya. They can still bite ya unless you scramble the brains a little. He must have noticed it, too, because he got all confused lookin’ for just a second and kinda started poking at it with his bare fingers; just temptin’ it to bite him.
About that time’s when I saw the first of ‘em start comin’ in. I swear, where there’s one, there’s a million and that’s exactly what happened out there. They started pouring in like liquid death and makin’ their way for this guy. He turned his head once, and then looked back down at the one in his hand. He looked all thoughtful for a sec, then turned back to the swarmin’ mass of decay comin’ in through that door and snarled like a wolf. Another good tug and the head came clear free of the body. He threw it like a hammer and crushed the face of the nearest corpse, bringin’ it down in a slow heap. His voice had changed to a feral rasp and he screamed at ‘em all what a mistake they were makin’ and how they were about to regret it.
He flew headlong into the mass and took two down with knife-hand strikes to the side of their necks. Then the one in front of him was nearly torn in two by the spinning kick that caught it just below the ribs. He carried the body of one of the ones he had karate chopped around with him in the spin and flung it into the mass. The moans were so overpowering about then I almost couldn’t take it anymore. I was lookin’ for a way outta there quick and I could see that everyone else was too. He had grabbed the nearest carcass and buried those nightmare teeth of his into its throat when I saw Tai and thought of the keys. I never woulda went for ‘em, except I was scared. I ain’t too much man to admit it.
He was howlin’ and screamin’ with every death, and they just kept rollin’ in by the score. I heard bones and guts hittin’ skin and teeth so I looked back over into the fray and to evaluate the chances of me actually survivin’ what I was thinkin’ of doin’. I saw that the one he’d damn near kicked in half had bit him good on the top of his thigh as it went down, but at least a handful of others were gone for good. He moved like a blur through ‘em, man. Sometimes I couldn’t tell where he was through all the ropey gore he was makin’ of ‘em.
Seriously, though, I could’ve counted twenty or thirty of those things and he’d smashed half of ‘em. Whatever he was, I didn’t still wanna be there when he finished off the other half, so I dove out from behind the freezer case and went for the keys. I had to dig through a disgusting mess of what used to be one of my best friends to get ‘em, too. Man, I’ve never been so terrified in all my life when I finally grabbed ‘em. I shot my eyes over to where the guy was givin' the horde hell, and I saw that there were at least another fistful still bodies piled all around him. I think twice that many had made it in the door, though and his fight wasn’t even close to over. Even though he was goin’ through ‘em like a stranded on a hot-cooked meal, for every one he cut down, two more grabbed at his pinstripes and neck tie.
I did kind of a crouch-run as fast as I could back to where I’d been hiding and double checked our exit. So far, the plague hadn’t reached the door we came in through, but who knew what was waiting just outside. With hand signals, I told everyone to keep quiet and run for the door. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take another peek at what was goin’ on back behind me. It was almost like one of those old DVD karate movies we used to watch seein’ him work. If I wasn’t so damned scared of him, I’d have probably waited it out and invited him back home with us. The Zombies inside numbered in the dozens, except the flow into the building had ebbed off quite a bit. He was ripped up pretty good, but he wasn’t bleedin’ nor was he slowin’ down. He was almost to the door they were comin’ in from by the time I could drag myself away; it was almost hypnotic all that kickin’ punchin, tearin’ em apart with his hands. Un-freakin’-real.
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So, you’re askin’ me now why we’re packin’ up and leavin’ after making our way so good these past few years? That’s why. And I recommend y’all do the same. Y’know, when we got out of that building, I figured he was good as gone, but he wasn’t. See, couple days later we start to hear scratchin’ and knockin’ at doors and windows around camp. Normally, we just play it all quiet like and wait for daylight to take care of ‘em; bein’ that they can track us the same come sunshine or dark and we like our chances in the light. But, when morning came, wasn’t nothin’ there. We checked the condition the outer walls of our nest and asked the watchers what they seen and they said the same thing. Nothin’.
That was a few days after we got back. Few days after that, someone spots him. He’s wearin’ that same vest and those fancy slacks, only he’s standin’ outside widow Farland’s place. Then a couple nights later, he’s over at Connoly’s and a week later he starts harassin’ poor Mrs. Salesi, Tai’s wife, still with no luck. Finally, he makes his way over to musclehead Stumph’s door and starts his knockin’. He waits a while then knocks again. He ain’t makin’ a whole ton a noise, just enough to rouse Stumph. I still can’t figure out why he didn’t just smash in and take us all out. I seen him at work. If I knew he could’ve done it, he had to a known it too. I can’t say it enough, the guy just didn’t seem to be playin’ by the same rules as the rest of us.
Now, Stumph didn’t have no family or nothin’ but the mess we found inside that house looked like someone had slaughtered a whole pen full of pigs right there in the living room. Thing you gotta realize is, Stump was the biggest, meanest guy of the lot of us. What he was lackin’ height, he made up for in the size department. You shoulda seen him; maybe five and a half feet from the ground, but probably just as wide in the shoulder. His arms were at least as big as my oldest’s thighs and wasn’t a spot of fat on him. Said it was just how he was born. Then, when he started to lose his hair, he started shavin’ his head and that made him look all the meaner.
Next day, we called everyone in to find out if anyone had seen anything. Now, I didn’t see it; but from what I hear, wasn’t no struggle on the way in. Nope, for some reason, that crazy old musclehead just let that thing walk right in. There wasn’t no noises that you wouldn’t expect to hear, and from what the watcher said, the guy he saw knockin didn’t look like the type we are normally worryin’ about. Sure, we get the offhand crazy thinkin’ they can come in and take whatever they want from us.
But, that’s another thing we’ve learned. When it first started, we thought there was safety in numbers. We let anyone in that wasn’t turned. Then we started to realize that no enforcement meant no rules. Zombies we can deal with. They never change it up. It’s always the same thing. Doesn’t matter time of day, season, year, none of it. They just keep comin’. People, though, them’s the real scary ones. See, people think. People are smart. Even the dumbest people are smarter than any slug. The worst part of that is that the dumb ones don’t seem to last long. They weed out until what’s left are the real brains. They’re clever, crafty, and sick.
They’ll eat ya. Hell, they’ll eat them. They move in and kill off the old ones, kidnap the young ones, and do whatever their messed up little fancies are to the rest of ya. It gets real bad. There’s some that’ll hold ya down and let their turned take a bite or two of you each day, because they can’t let go. Others like to make you strip naked and fight scores of ‘em just to earn the chance at some spoilt bread. Then there’s them nuts that go around preachin’ that we all did somethin to deserve all this hell and it’s their mission to cleanse the earth with the sickness. They come in all forms, but make no mistake, they come quick and they come strong.
Anyway, it was clear he made it out on his own two legs and followed us back home. Nobody got a really good look at him, either because he only came around at night, or they didn’t live to tell anyone else. But we knew it was him because he was still wearin’ that vest and those slacks; blacker’n midnight. Yeah, he died alright; those zombies got him, but just like it does us, it brought him back up and made ‘m hungry.
Wasn’t no holes in the nest he could’a come through. Must have jumped clean over that wall was around our camp and started pickin us off one by one. Yeah, Stumph was just the first. Seems like once he got let in to one house, he didn’t have a problem finding his way in to the rest. What was strange about it was it seemed like he didn’t really eat anybody, just tore ‘em up real good and played in the blood. Also, he wouldn’t keep eatin’ ‘til he blew neither. He flew in and only scooped up enough to get by for a day or two. Sure made it hard when they was all in pieces; the Zombies he made. We lost a couple to bites we never saw comin’. We weren’t used to finding ‘em inside our walls. Never knew who might end up Zeta by the morning, so we just figured we’d get as far away as possible.
We was lookin’ for a place to hold out when we found this one, we’ll keep lookin’ and we’ll find one again. Just hope when we do, that freakin’ thing hasn’t sniffed us down. If he has, there’s nothing any of us can do. Mixin’ what he was with what they was is the worst thing could of happened for all of us. It’ll be the end for sure. The real end. The one that nobody makes it through.
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