Mr. Fontaine tried to wrestle himself from the corpse’s grip, but it’s freshness made sure that most of it’s muscles were intact and they were more than enough to pin an old man down.
It was a young man in a dress shirt and tie. He was trying to evacuate straight from his job, however, he was unlucky and became the enemy.
“For fuck’s sake! Help me! Tommy!”, Mr. Fontaine saw the group running towards him.
Margie saw something in the corner of her eye.
“Shit”, she said to herself. “All of his yelling is attracting a bunch of them.”
“Dad! Hang on!”, Tommy was getting close to him, jumping over corpses and weaving through cars, with tears in his eyes he ran to his father.
“Tommy! Get this guy off of me!”, Mr. Fontaine yelled desperately for his son, but the distraction was a foolish mistake.
“Tommy! Aaah! No..”, Mr. Fontaine had taken a bite to the throat. Tommy watched as the hungry ghoul tore off a piece of his father’s throat. He and his mortally wounded father both watched the creature greedily chew and swallow a vein that kept blood pumping to his head.
“Dad. DAD!”, Tommy whined, kicking the ghoul over and letting his father fall to the ground. Tommy stomped the creature with angry tears in his eyes. Mr. Fontaine tried to get himself up, but was grabbed by a crawling ghoul. The creature grabbed his forearm, making his efforts to get up futile and proceeded to take a bite out of the weakened man.
Tommy was too busy kicking the young businessman to notice his father gasping for attention. One of Mr. Fontaine’s arms was at his throat, desperately trying to keep the blood in his body. The other was being torn apart by the hungry beast.
Another crawling ghoul, smelling the blood, slowly made his way to the dying Mr. Fontaine and began to chew on his leg. Mr. Fontaine just watched the abomination chew off pieces of his leg through his trousers. He laid his head back and let himself die. It was far too late for him.
Mr. Fontaine was the first to go. His last thought was that he wished he could have seen his son and his herd make it to safety.
He breathed his last breath and left this world.
“Dad! No, no, no, come on, get up!”, Tommy, so filled with grief, did not even notice the monsters still eating his father.
Paulie made it to the scene and kicked the ghoul off of Mr. Fontaine’s leg.
“Tommy! What the fuck is wrong with you! Get that shit off of him!”, Paulie yelled to Tommy.
Tommy could only look at his father’s mangled body and weep. He fell to his knees.
Kara and Margie made it to the scene.
Kara covered her mouth and gasped at the horrific scene.
Margie stomped on the monster’s head that was still tearing bits of flesh and muscle off of Mr. Fontaine.
“Guys, I’m sorry, but we need to go. All the noise, just, just look!”, Margie said. The stress in her voice was very obvious.
“Oh shit, look, they’re all coming here!”, Kara said, pointing at the throng of ghouls coming at them from between the cars and some more crawling on the ground.
“Daddy”, Tommy uttered.
“Come on ,we need to go. It wasn’t safe here before, but now, hiding isn’t even worth it. They’re coming from ahead of us too. I don’t think we can make it to the gated community now. Fuck, man”, Paulie said. His voice was becoming somber and quiet. He was losing faith.
“Let’s take the next exit off of the highway. It’s our last chance. We can’t possibly make it through here now.” Kara looked at the ghouls slowly marching towards them ahead of them. Turning around, she saw the larger horde slowly descending on them.
“Dad-dy”, Tommy said slowly.
Margie checked her gun. She had five bullets, only five. She looked at the horde and at her gun. She decided to only shoot four if it ever came down to it. The thought made her shake a bit, but she would not want to end up suffering like Mr. Fontaine did.
“GOD! I’M SORRY! I HAVE SINNED! TAKE ME, YOUR FAITHFUL SON WITH YOU UP TO HEAVEN!” Tommy got on his knees and began to scream as loud as he can.
“GOD! YOU HAVE TAKEN EVERYTHING I HAVE FROM ME. PLEASE LORD! TAKE ME WITH YOU! DELIVER ME FROM THIS EVIL!”
“Tommy! No! Shut the fuck up man. You’re bringing more over here!” Paulie was filled with anger. He looked out into the distance and saw more zombies crawling towards them. They came from under the cars, the freshly animated ones. Others were beginning to rise from the corpse heaps on the ground.
“Tommy! Stop it! You’re going to get us all killed”, Kara said. Unable to yell, she pleaded with him to stop.
Tommy tore off his shirt and continued.
“TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS WORLD. OH LORD, TAKE ME AWAY. I AM HERE! I AM A MAN MADE IN YOUR OWN IMAGE! I WANT TO BE TAKEN AWAY FROM THE DEVIL’S ARMY THAT ATE MY FATHER!...”
Margie’s eyes opened wide, she and everyone else were in trouble. She cocked back the hammer of her gun. She turned around quickly.
A freshly risen ghoul, awoken by Tommy’s “prayer” has arisen right behind Margie. She pointed the gun to the monster’s face and fired her gun.
BANG!
Four bullets left.
The creature’s brain matter sprayed everywhere, and with a fresh hole in it’s head, the monster was down and would not be getting back up again.
The group, save Tommy, was walking towards the nearest highway exit faster and faster.
Tommy stood there, screaming to the Lord for help.
Paulie smashed a nearby zombie’s head with a hammer.
“TOMMY! CUT IT OUT! WE NEED TO GO!”
“Tommy! Come on! This isn’t funny anymore! We need to go!”
Paulie and Kara said, respectively.
Margie ran to the group, the ghouls were gathering fast, she ran past the kneeling Tommy. She had her back to Kara and Paulie.
“We need to leave”, Margie said.
“What about Tommy? We can’t just leave him here!”
“Fuck him. Let’s go. He’s not right. We need to leave! That exit doesn’t have too many of them. We can run past them!”, Kara yelled.
“Margie, come on!” Paulie urged her to go. She didn’t know what to do.
“He’s attracting way too much attention. Someone needs to kill him!”
“WHAT?!”, Paulie and Margie said at the same time.
“You heard me, he needs to die. All his yelling just keeps bringing more and more of those things to us. Our lives are in danger!”, Kara said.
“No, it’s not right. We can’t just kill Tommy. We need to get him to come with us”, Paulie almost pleaded.
“Margie, shoot him! Kill him! If you don’t, we all die! Kill him!”, Kara yelled
Margie held up her gun. She had Tommy’s head in her sights. She scanned the area and saw almost two times as many ghouls raised by Tommy’s noise. She turned around to Kara and Paulie. Margie saw a sea of zombies, attracted to the noise, coming in their direction. It would take about 10 minutes for them to meet their destination.
“Margie, no, don’t do it. Come on, get him to come with us! Make it better!”, Paulie stood pleading. Margie didn’t want to look into his eyes.
“No, kill him! He’s trying to kill us all!”
“Don’t shoot him! Margie, please!”
“He needs to die now!”
Margie stood there, now shaking. The devil and angel were on her shoulders, but the choices weren’t cut and dry. She let their voices drown out and she began to pray. The right choice would come to her, but she didn’t have the time.
“God is good, Jesus saves. God is good, Jesus saves.”
She opened her eyes and the choice was clear to her. It wasn’t perfect, but it would buy them all enough time.
Margie lowered her father’s gun.
“We need to leave. Let’s go. Head to that exit. We’ll find a hiding spot.”