They Hunger

Sta

It was rainy and dreary that October morning. It was a Tuesday and I had been on the road non-stop for the last day or so. I made a point of carrying a calendar with me in my endless trek. Even though the year for which the calendar was actually intended had passed several months ago, there were some mini-calendars on the back cover spanning an additional two years. Somehow keeping count of the passing days helped to keep me sane. Funny thing time is though. Did it really matter anymore? With no need to set an alarm, with no appointments to keep, without others waiting for you, did it even really exist anymore? Surely the sun still rose and set over our festering world, but without a title to attach to the day, how can one prove it existed? How many others were out there just like me, traversing the endless void of what once was? Did any of them bother to care what day it was? Did they even have any idea what year it was at this point? Well, I knew, and that made all of the difference. It was time itself that was at stake as man’s greatest invention to be lost. Without accounting for the passage of time, you can really only live from day to day. If, somehow, the timeline could be maintained, maybe, just maybe what little was left of life could also be maintained. My pondering, philosophizing mind wandered, and my car followed shortly behind, meandering slightly off to the grass beside the roadway. Jarred back to my journey I righted my car back into a smooth course. My previous musings on time brought me back to the reality that it had been quite some time since I had last put gas in the tank. Glancing down at the gas gauge I wasn’t surprised to see that the tank was nearly empty. This wouldn’t be a problem for long though; I had made sure to stock up on fuel before I took to the highway. It was actually a pleasant trip so far. The main interstates were ghost towns at this point. Sure some of the on and off ramps to more populated areas were a nightmarish parking lot full of cars, trucks, SUV’s, and even a motorcycle or scooter, all funneled into a lane or two at best . These means of conveyance would be coffins for their former owners had it not been for the fact that they got up and wandered off only moments after they had been half-devoured where they sat. Once you were actually driving across the open road, however, you could go for miles and miles before even coming across an abandoned car. Even so, you never really wanted to spend too much time on a roadside pit stop. Invariably they would come. First in slow trickles, gradually working their way, one by one; they would come. Slinking through wooded stretches separating the road from the neighborhoods that ran parallel to it, they would soon find you. They were never too far, and they would find you. It started with one or two, but they would draw more to you. Before long they would arrive in numbers, and even then, more would find their way until you had no choice but to run or be counted among their ranks.

In any case, my current lack of gas situation would be a quick fix. Out of habit I pulled over to the shoulder. By this point it didn’t matter where I stopped the car anyway. This patch of interstate was a barren stretch of pavement. My life was a barren stretch of pavement. It had been weeks since I had seen another living person. That was back in Florida, and was the last time I had attempted to hold up somewhere rather than sleep in my car and hope nothing found me. She said her name was Sandra, and she had found her way into the abandoned elementary school only a few minutes before I had. We had it pretty good there, for a few days at least. The cafeteria was fully stocked with a fairly decent variety of canned foods. Shelf after shelf was teeming with gigantic cans of beans, tuna, peanut butter and more. The teacher’s lounge had a nice couch that we spent the nights together on. The days were spent exploring and securing the school. Yeah, things were pretty good…up until she had her back to that door we thought was locked. A deep chill swept over me as the image of her being devoured by those god-damn things crept into my mind. I could hear the crunching of bones like branches being snapped in half. Shuddering, I shook my head, and forced the memory to stop playing in my head. Like turning off a video, the horrible visage of exposed organs, and fountains of blood ceased. After seeing the same scene so many times over the months it had become just that easy to tune out. What had at first caused me to vomit uncontrollably was now just a fact of what life had become. The difficult part was coming to terms with how alone I now was. The world had become a gigantic desert island, and I was a castaway. Well, I guess alone, wasn’t exactly true. A few hundred miles south I had come across a little black kitten. He was on his own, and a survivor too. A life-long fan of zombie movies before my life became one, I named him Romero, and we’ve been traveling companions ever since.

Patting Romero on the head, I told him to hang tight as I exited the vehicle. As I grabbed my omnipresent shotgun, I made my way to the trunk. Popping the trunk revealed a slew of metal ammo boxes, and a row of four gas cans neatly lined up together, like soldiers in some grand parade. I grabbed one, and began to pour its contents into the gas tank. Glug, glug, glug; the methodical thump of the emptying liquid soothed me and I began to lose track of things. That’s when I heard Romero meowing loudly. I figured that he was expecting me to be busy grabbing a can of food for him which I usually kept in the trunk with the other necessities; gas and ammo.

“Yeah buddy, I’m hungry too, and it looks like we’re all out of food”, I said nonchalantly without diverting my gaze from refueling.

Spilling gas would mean needing to get more that much sooner. Getting more gas would mean breaking out the siphoning hose, and having to coax it straight out of another car the hard way. Just the thought of that sick taste wetting my mouth as the fumes traveled up the back of my throat, and into my nostrils made me want to wretch. No, I was certainly not in a hurry to have to replay that nauseating scene. Every drop of gas had to be accounted for, so at first I didn’t look up, even as Romero’s humble meowing turned into a wicked hiss. Finally, I tilted my head upwards to see my cat up on the seat with his front paws pressed into the glass of the window. His hisses had become shrieks as he flashed his teeth, and stared intently into the wooded area beside the roadway.

“What is it buddy,” I inquired as I shifted my gaze to see what he was looking at, “Awww crap…..”

Shambling over to the car was a fairly decomposed man in a fancy business suit. It reminded me of a nice, black suit with faint white pin stripes I used to own. He even wore a bright red tie with it, just like I used to wear. Luckily the shrieks from inside the car had caught his attention and he didn’t even notice me...yet. It was getting harder and harder, however, not to be overwhelmed by him. Now, about 15 yards away, the stench of rotting flesh was pungent enough to cause me to puke a bit into my mouth. I could handle looking at the infected and even stomach seeing them gorge themselves on the flesh of the living, but not that smell. That smell was something that I could never get used to. The stench was a pungent incense of rotten meat, raw sewage, and fecal matter. I spit the chunk of vomit that had surfaced out of my mouth which drew the ghoul’s attention towards me. Moaning with a head laying askew, he dragged one leg in front of the other towards me. His once starched and pressed suit was caked in blood and dirt. Several tares revealed patches of flesh that had festered down to bone and sinew. Flies swarmed about, and snacked on any part of him that wasn’t clothed. Maggots wormed their way in and out of chunks of discolored, greenish-grey flesh. The extent of his decay caused this automaton to stumble along with the disjointed gate of a wino on his way to the corner store for one last bottle of Wild Irish Rose before they closed shop for the night. This was a morbid marionette being pulled along by the clumsy hands of a truly twisted puppet master. With a head that slumped dramatically from side to side it was clear that this unfortunate fellow’s neck had been fractured at one point or another. Maybe it was an injury incurred by the frantic, futile struggles of a previous victim who had ultimately succumbed to becoming a meal for this undead professional. That would be a shame, but that would not be my fate as well. As Business Suit crept closer, I put down the gas can, and picked up my shotgun from the ground. Raising it up, I took aim. You have to always aim for the head. It’s the kind of thing you would just assume, given the circumstances. If you had spent as much time as I had watching horror movies before finding yourself in one, at least, you would assume to aim for the head. Still, in the heat of the moment it sometimes became easy to forget this and just shoot wildly; pumping round after round into a sack of flesh that just kept coming at you. Hell, I even saw one with no legs or arms drag what was left of herself towards me by using her teeth to slowly inch across the ground. Like some sort of rotted-flesh Pez dispenser, her head would lift and then slam back into the floor, causing teeth, among other pieces of her face, to fall out as she made her way towards me. You put a bullet in the brain, however, and you put these things down for good. Even though I had plenty of ammo stocked up in the trunk I never wanted to let any go to waste, so I waited for Business Suit to get closer before I put him to sleep. He was certainly taking his time, and I had the unfortunate opportunity to study what remained of his face in greater detail than I would have chosen otherwise. His right eye was slightly unhinged from the socket, and swung loosely for a half inch or so below it. The other stared right through me. Bloodshot and wide open it pierced me with its icy gaze. Large chunks of flesh were absent from either side of his jaw, where blackened teeth could be clearly seen. As he got closer still, I could clearly make out pieces of meat and a fingernail stuck in his back teeth.

“Alright, that’s it. Just a little bit closer now,” and with that I eased back the trigger and watched as Business Suit’s head exploded into a thousand little pieces of brain tissue and skull fragments.

After I had turned Business Suit’s cranium into a crimson mist I kept my gun raised and scanned the area for any signs of other undead. Once I was satisfied that I was in the clear I swapped my shotgun for the gas can, and finished emptying it into the car. It was only 5 gallons, but after that last scene I thought it best to get going on my way, and save filling more for later. As I stuck the empty gas can back into the trunk I remembered that while we were good on gas and ammunition (for at least a bit longer), there was no food left for either Romero or me. I always dreaded the inevitable excursion to acquire more provisions. At best it would mean running into a convenience store that was well lit by the daylight shining through the large windows in front. Those smash and grab jobs were even a bit of fun sometimes. Running in and tearing snack cakes and chips off the shelves somehow brought back the thrill of danger to be found in shoplifting as a teenager. At worst though it would mean trekking into a dark supermarket, lit only by my flashlight. The bright side of that negative being that, if I played my cards right, I might be able to get some better quality canned goods, and maybe even some other supplies. As I got back behind the wheel of the car my furry little co-pilot crawled up next to me and began rubbing his face against my arm.

“Don’t worry little buddy. I’ll get some food for us one way or another,” I reassured both the cat and myself as I cranked up the engine, peeled out of the shoulder and screeched back onto the freeway.

It only took about 5 miles of traveling up the road before we reached the next exit. The sign identifying the exit had been knocked over and was lying on the side of the road. After the previous episode while refueling I figured it wasn’t worth my trouble to get out and see where we were headed. It really made no difference anyway. Wherever we ended up I just wanted to jump out, grab some chow, and get back on my way as expediently as possible. Someone back in Florida had told me that they had heard of some places in northern Canada that hadn’t been touched by the infection. That was in the early days though, just a month or so after the outbreak and maybe there weren’t any safe places anymore. Really, it had become hard to tell what was going on in the world these days unless you saw it firsthand. Sure, during the first few days of the epidemic virtually every channel on TV offered up non-stop coverage of the impending crisis. Nobody knew exactly what was happening though. The religious nuts called it the apocalypse. The conspiracy nuts swore it was a government experiment gone awry. The airwaves and social media were a crowded room with everyone shouting to be heard the loudest. All anybody knew for sure was that the deceased weren’t staying dead for long. Worse still, the condition seemed to be spreading like a virus. The infected roamed the streets attacking the living like packs of rabid dogs. Most were fresh back then, and pretty damn quick. Luckily months of rot and decay had seen to it that most were at least slightly less adept at hauling themselves around. Fast or slow, their presence puts a perpetually bad day on the horizon. Nobody wanted to say the “Z” word, though, and the CDC was the first to give a name to what was transpiring around us. The Necrosis Virus, they called it briefly; shortly before they said no more. That, however, was back when there was television and internet service. It was less than a month after the CDC announced their official statements and warnings before the last broadcasts aired and all servers went down. Within a day or two of that the lights went out everywhere. By that time those of us left alive were outnumbered at least 1,000 to 1 by the undead. We were all just mice biding our time in the snakes’ tank. All that mattered now was surviving for as long as I could, and that invariably brought me to my task at hand. And so, while my plans originally called for heading up to Canada I found my existence had steadily devolved into a day to day struggle just to survive and stay sane. Besides, if they were wrong and there was no safe space up in northern Canada I'd likely find myself trapped in a long winter with a better preserved horde of mindless cannibal corpses to contend with. If nothing else, temperate environments sped up their rot, ironically slowing them down and making their constant presence just a bit more manageable.

As we turned off the highway I scanned the sides of the smaller local road which we were now on for any signs of little convenience stores that might make it easier to run in and out with food. Wherever we were it must have been a rather insignificant backwater when it was a functioning town because there didn’t seem to be much of anything for at least the first few miles down the road. Sure, there was a post office, a church, and the obligatory town hall. There were a few scattered houses and a trailer park. If I couldn’t find a store of some sort, if I had absolutely no choice, I’d double back this way, and run into an abandoned dwelling or two until I got enough food for the next day or so. I passed by an antique shop, and a little luncheonette, but nothing of much use to me. I thought there must be something nearby so I commented to Romero as if he understood, “Well, if there’s no little stores around here there’s gotta’ be a Wal-Mart or K-Mart, or something, somewhere around”

I only had to drive a little bit further, and there it was, rising out of the horizon like some sort of temple to what our lives once were. Just a little further down the road, on top of a small rise, was what must have been the epicenter of this sleepy little hamlet at one time. A large Wal-Mart Super Center loomed like a monument off on the right hand side of the road next to us. Pulling into the parking lot, the place seemed desolate enough, but as I weaved through the abandoned cars up to the front of the store an ominous shattered sliding glass door became more apparent. Maybe another survivor had already pillaged the store for anything worthwhile. Worse yet, maybe the town’s former inhabitants had wandered in looking for living flesh to snack on. Either way, food was needed for me and Romero. The possibility of being able to stock up on a week's worth of canned food, or more, was too enticing to pass up. So, I parked my car right next to the breach in the once-sliding, glass door and prepared myself for the raid that was about to take place. Reaching into the backseat I grabbed my trusty, big and heavy Maglite flashlight; equally useful for illuminating a dark corridor or smashing a soggy skull as you bid a hasty retreat. I was about to egress from the car carrying my flashlight, an empty backpack, and my trusty 12-gauge when a better idea occurred to me. Realizing that I may need to keep my hands free, more or less, I lay the shotgun across my center console, and reached into a duffel bag in the backseat where I kept other guns I had acquired in my travels. Pulling out a 357 Magnum, I remarked to Romero with a smirk, “Feeling lucky? Well do ya’, punk? Yes, this should do just fine. Now, if I don’t come back in 20 minutes, start the car and go on without me.” Romero simply meowed his consent to my plans as I laughed a little through my nose .

Entering the store, I clicked on my flashlight and surveyed the scene before me. Shopping carts were scattered across the store. Some had merchandise still sitting in them as if somebody was about to return from looking elsewhere and proceed to the checkout. Carefully moving around these obstacles, I stealthily made my way towards the part of the store where the food would be. As I got closer the rank stench of long rotten fruits and vegetables became more pungent as it pinched my nostrils. Scanning the produce section revealed that what was left of these once fresh foodstuffs had been reduced into compost piles. The nearby deli case was stuffed, not with the cold-cuts which had long been devoured, but with the lifeless shells of the insects which had feasted there. There must have been thousands of dead flies rotting away behind the glass of the display case. The display wasn’t lifeless, however, as it pulsated with the wriggling of hundreds of maggots slithering their way through the corpses of their parents. Just thinking of these revolting creatures engaging in an endless cycle of fucking each other and then being devoured by their own offspring almost made me vomit into my mouth a bit again. That happened a lot over the past several months. Beelzebub himself would gag at such a site taking place amongst his charges. Shuddering at both the aroma and sights to be found in this section of the store, I carefully made my way to the canned food aisle.

Once I reached my destination I shined my flashlight down the aisle and couldn’t help but smile at the sight before me. The shelves were fully stocked with can after can of precious sustenance. It was no surprise to find plenty of canned veggies. Even after the end of the world it seemed like most Americans still chose to not eat anything remotely healthy, if given the chance. I, however, realized man can't live on corned beef and canned tuna alone. After making a point of grabbing a few cans of spinach and carrots, I made my way over to the meats. Seeing that section of non-perishables so intact was a very pleasant surprise. I must have been one of the first survivors to visit this store. Still moving as quietly as I could, I picked up can after can and stowed them away in my backpack. I grabbed them with such care you would think I was plucking the ripest of grapes and not cans of salty meat by-products. Once I had stuffed my bag full of sardines, Vienna sausages, and other such canned meats, I did a speedy dash over to the pet food aisle to snag some cat food. Then I started to make my way back towards the entrance of the store.

I had almost made it back to the checkout counters when I heard a distinctive moaning. That sound could only mean one thing, so crouching low in a housewares aisle I stopped for a moment and listened intently. It was good to maintain a low profile when they were around. It gave keeping your ear to the ground new meaning. The guttural moans of what had at first sounded like only one creature soon turned into an opera of anguish. The morbid choir grew louder and louder, so still crouching low to the ground I warily made my way towards them to survey the situation. Peering around the corner of an aisle right in front of the checkout I saw them. There were about a dozen stumbling, moaning, hungering autopsies lurching their way towards the opening through which I had entered a few minutes before. They must have been haunting some other end of the store I hadn’t visited. Wherever they had been, they were now blocking my exit. I had to think of something, and quickly. If other undead heard their cries they would probably start meandering on over and join the party. My first thought was to shoot my way out, but then the reality that I was working with a revolver hit home. Sure, maybe I’d have time to reload. Hell, for all I knew, I might even be immune to their bites. I did not feel like putting either hypothesis to the test today. The only way out of this was to lure them away from the front of the store, and double-back there myself so I could get back to my car. So, screaming like a banshee I made my presence known. They wasted no time, and were soon dragging themselves over to me as fast as their rotten legs would allow. With my backpack practically overflowing with food, and with gun and flashlight in hand I bolted towards the rear of the store. Some of those bastards were a bit quicker than most I had encountered lately. My plan of doubling back, and going out the way I came in seemed less and less likely as I darted through the store towards the back. A couple of them were getting closer to me, and were now only a yard or two behind. It was just as I passed the bicycles that another fell from somewhere above and dropped like a sack of rice onto the floor in front of me. Undeterred, this fellow, a former employee judging by his apparel, shot his top half up and lunged his arms at me.

“Son of a whore,” I exclaimed as I leapt over him like a track star in some sort of infernal Olympiad.

Then I saw it right in front of me; an emergency exit.

“Please work, please work, please work, “I panted as I hurled my body into the door.

In an instant I had my answer, as I was on the other side and back in the cold light of the October day. Out of breath, and with my heart beating like a drum machine I made sure the door slammed shut behind me as I paused for a moment. The bright daylight was harsh and overbearing on my eyes after spending time in the dark store. Squinting, I began to take stock of my surroundings. The back of the store, much like the front, was filled with abandoned cars. Unlike the front, however, the back parking lot was, literally in some cases, crawling with moving corpses. Dozens and dozens of them were making their way towards the back of the store from where I had just emerged. A few had just started to become cognizant, or at least whatever it could be called with these things, of my existence. They began to grumble and moan at the sight of a fresh snack. Luckily, this time around the closest were still at least half a football field or more away. Wasting no time I sprinted around the side of the building and got right into my car. In no time Romero and I were back on the highway and heading off to what I could only hope were greener pastures. As I drove along I couldn’t help but think about how much things had changed in the world. Some things, though, never change. Nobody ever likes a crowd at the supermarket.