The three of us burst from the house. I was still jamming my finger on the button as I brought my hammer down into the eye of the creature dressed like a nun.
Swinging the metal, Kyle cleared a path for us.
Kyle and I were getting closer and closer to the Porsche, when I realized Michael was not with us. I looked back and could see that he had not left the front porch.
“Come on!” I yelled at him.
He was paralyzed with terror. Two creatures were heading right for him.
“Shit!” I yelled as I pulled the pistol out, targeted the sight right on the first zombie’s head and fired.
“Fuck!” Total miss. I was damn lucky not to hit the man I was trying to save.
Drawn by the noise of the shot, the two creatures turned around, and started toward me.
I leveled the gun again, paused, took a deep breath, and exhaled as I pulled the trigger. Another miss.
“Fuck me!” I howled in sheer frustration.
The movies make it look so easy. The reality is that the head is a pretty small target. Add the complicating factor of moving targets, and you can bet your ass that making it out to the shooting range a few times a year, won’t make you the Rambo of the Zombie Apocalypse.
I holstered the gun, and raised the hammer, my trusty hammer. As Kyle would have said, I’d have to go with hand to hand combat. I finished off the zombies with straining arms.
I took another five steps toward the Porsche, and hit the alarm button with all the strength my thumb could muster.
The most beautiful sound in the world erupted from the middle of the street.
I saw the three dead polishing off what was left of Sophia. They were quickly joined by the accumulating crowd, clearing the front yard just enough for us to navigate toward the safety of the Hummer.
Running over to Michael, Kyle grabbed him by his shirt collar, dragging him along the side of the house. The three of us crawled up into the Hummer, and I hit the ignition. Throwing it into gear as the car seat moved up, and the seat heaters turned on, I accelerated past the pack of zombies crawling all over the Porsche, and sped off down the street. Blowing through the blinking stoplight by the pharmacy, I watched the glow of the neighborhood lampposts through the rearview mirror as we drove away.
Even now, I remember them vividly. They were the last ones that I’d see working.
We spent the night parked on the side of the road near an overpass. It gave us some shelter, yet left us with a three hundred and sixty degree view in case we had need of a hasty escape.
As we hunkered down to catch some sleep, Michael popped a couple more pills and downed them with our diminishing supply of bottled water. I didn’t say anything. After all, he had drawn the shortest straw for the first watch.
We knew we’d have to find more gas and supplies in the morning. It was inevitable.
I was drifting off to sleep, my face turned into the corner between the seat and the locked door, when I could feel a light shine on my face. I opened my eyes to the glow coming from the sky. As the grogginess started to subside, it became clear that something was falling out of orbit.
My initial reaction was that it was a comet of some sort due to its long tail, like you’d see in pictures or the movies. It wasn’t heading straight down so much as it was shooting across the sky.
“It’s a satellite or a space station,” Michael said wearily. “Either way, it’s some sort of manmade space junk.”
“How do you know?” I asked curiously.
“Well, you see how it’s breaking apart, pieces falling all around it? That is the metal burning off. A meteor would be more rounded in the front. There are over twenty thousand pieces of manmade space junk floating around up there. Some bigger than others, obviously.” He was quite knowledgeable about it, telling me about the differences between how comets, meteors, and space debris fell through the atmosphere.
“How do you know about all that?” I asked.
“My son was really into it. We’d go up to our building’s rooftop to watch the stars. Well, watch ‘em as much as we could through all the smog in the city. Hell, with the right telescope you can still see plenty.” Michael paused. “He wanted to see a comet so badly…,” he finally said, drifting off into thought.
He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, but I knew his son wouldn’t be seeing a comet.
We sat there for a while, watching the glowing projectile. If it was, in fact, a space station, I wondered if there was anybody still alive in there, or in any space station for that matter. Good luck with the resupply.
Looking across the front seat, I saw that Kyle was fast asleep.
I also caught a small movement out of the corner of my eye. The glow from the falling object had lit up a small field with tall grass to our right. There were three zombies out there.
They simply stood there, with faces pointed upward, gazing at the sky. They were completely drawn toward the light.
“Look over there,” I whispered. “With the moon gone, especially after being near full for a number of nights, we may never have known they were out there.”
We watched them from the safety of the Hummer. Each of them rocking in place, trying as hard as their stiff bodies would allow them to look up at the light show.
Following their gaze, I thought back to before Jenn and I had been married. We were out camping with some friends, and she and I had snuck away from the group, lying in the bed of an old rusted pickup truck. A shooting star flew across the night sky. It was the first that I’d ever seen. We kissed for the first time under that spectacle. Her lips were soft as silk, and I remember feeling the warmth of her body against mine. Call it what you like, but I knew right then and there that she would be my wife.
“Looks like it’s landing southeast. The same direction we’re heading.” Michael interrupted my memory.
That observation was a little unsettling to me. Neither of us said anything for a few moments. Drawn toward the light as much as the zombies outside. Michael seemed to feel my discomfort.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see it. It will probably burn to bits in the atmosphere before it ever hits the ground. Probably,” Michael added. I snorted in amused relief.
I woke Kyle then, to let him know that we were moving down the street a ways to find a better place to sleep for the night. He gave a sleepy nod but his attention was on the light. Still mesmerized, the zombies didn’t even budge when we started the car or drove away. I parked in another spot, having used the headlights and alleged falling debris light to scout an area free of zombies.
I fell asleep wondering if Jenn was watching the show from wherever she was.
Chapter 16
You’ve saved my life countless times. You have my word.
The morning hours were spent scavenging other cars on the highway. We tried to stay away from groups of cars, as they proved to be the most dangerous, and likely had crawlers or grabbers.
Crawlers were the dead that crawled across the ground, usually with some sort of physical deformity that would not allow them to walk. Grabbers were what we called the zombies that were still buckled into the cars. They would grab at us when we walked by an open window.
Both would scare the shit out of us, especially because we usually couldn’t see them coming as easily as the ambulatory creatures, who we eventually coined as just plain old Zs, based on what the people back at the neighborhood had called them.
I was on the hunt for some new clothing. I had noticed that morning, aside from my suit being covered in blood and torn, that I was continually pulling up my pants. I had definitely lost weight. A steady diet of snack bars and bottled water will do that to a man, especially one who lives on burgers and fast food.