CHAPTER
1
Jesse
There were five corpses milling about the
corner of Oak Street and Maple Circle.
They had no real goal in particular.
Some paced back and forth, some walked in circles, and one was just
sitting in the lawn of number 316 pulling grass and tossing it into the
air. He’d been at it so long that two
crescents of bare earth lay on either side of him.
Across the street Robert and Susan were
standing at the door looking through the glass.
It was tough to do since most of the glass was frosted over and just the
borders remained clear. But it was also
better since it kept others from seeing in.
After staying in their house for a week the
middle-aged couple was doing fairly well.
Susan, who normally kept her hair in pristine condition, felt herself a
mess, but compared to most of the survivors she looked immaculate. Her red hair, dyed, was quite clean and well
combed. Her housedress was clean and
starched. It was the last of its kind in
the closet.
Robert was in “weekend” clothes. Simple pants, not different from those that
were for work accept they weren’t professionally tailored. His shirt was a simple polo shirt. The pale blue color matched Susan’s
earrings. This was not an accident. He was clean-shaven and his comb-over still
managed to fool no one that he had begun losing his hair before graduating high
school.
“We just run across the street, get into
the car and drive away,” Susan said.
“We just have to wait for the right
time. Until they’re all far enough from
the car that we can outrun them.”
They waited. After a short time they decided that the five
people outside were sufficiently distant from their car to go for it. They counted to three and ran.
Using the keyless entry, Robert unlocked
the Explorer, which beeped loudly. The
few shufflers that hadn’t seen them running now looked up and noticed. Five of them were making their best effort to
get to them. One had tripped into a
trash can and was currently struggling, upside down, to get out of the can;
another, with only one leg, was crawling towards them; the grass picker hadn’t
even looked up and the other two were gnawing on either end of what used to be
a house cat.
“I’ll drive,” Robert yelled out as he got
to the driver’s door. Susan ran to the
other side of the car. She’d tried to
open the door but it was still locked.
“You have to hit the button twice!” she
said. But Robert was already in the car
and didn’t understand her.
“What?” he called out.
“You have to unlock this,” she began, but
didn’t finish. The man sitting on the
grass had gotten up, walked up behind her and grabbed her by putting his arm
across her neck. Now he stepped forward
and shoved her face into the window.
Robert jumped out of the driver’s side with
an umbrella in his hand and started around the car wielding it like a
weapon. “You son of a bitch!”
“Back off man!” screamed the grass puller,
his blue plaid shirt threatening to fall apart.
I’ll rip out her god damned jugular with my teeth if you come any
closer.” He then put his teeth on her
neck, which made her wince. Susan
couldn’t make a sound though, so tight was the man’s grip on her. She was turning a bit blue.
Robert stopped where he was, but didn’t put
down the umbrella. He now took a good
look at the man and noticed his skin was peeling off his face. Much of his hair had fallen out, in chunks,
and there was a huge gash on his left cheek that made it possible to see his
jawbone.
“Just give me the keys and I’ll let her
go.”
“But… but… you’re dead.”
“Good job, Einstein. And she will be too unless you hand me the
damned keys.” He smashed her face into
the window again. This loosened her grip
for just long enough for her to gasp and inhale fresh air. Blood began to trickle down her face.
“Fine, here,” Robert said as he slowly
approached the man holding his wife hostage.
But when Robert got close enough the man grabbed his hand, pulled him
closer and threw Susan to the ground where she lay, nearly paralyzed, trying to
catch her breath.
Robert was so caught off guard that he was
soon in the same position as Susan had been.
Struggling, he managed to kick backward and hit his captor in the
crotch. The man didn’t move.
“Stupid.
Dead men don’t feel pain.” He
laughed a bit and pulled Robert closer, clamping down on his throat
tighter. Susan still sat, unable to
comprehend the full details of what was going on.
The man looked at her over her husbands
shoulder. “By the way, the name’s
Jesse. Sorry for the head, but he looks
much tastier than you.” With that, Jesse
took a giant bite out of Robert’s neck whose mouth opened to scream, but the
air simply exited the gaping hole in his throat making bloody bubbles.
At this point, Jesse dropped him and
swallowed what he’d bitten of. It got caught
in his throat and he used his hand to push it down. It looked like a snake swallowing a rat. The large bulge slowly going down until it
passed into Jesse’s stomach. He wiped
the blood off his sleeve and extended a hand to Susan.
“So, seeing as how you’re now single, I was
wondering if you were free tonight?”
This was what broke her out of her
trance. She screamed, stood up, and ran
back to the door to her house. Some of
the corpses that had made their way to the car by now turned to follow her to
the door. But two kept moving towards
Jesse and Robert’s body. They were now within a few feet.
Jesse looked at them and hissed. “I made the kill, I get first dibs. So back off.”
It seemed to work. They didn’t
back off but they did stop advancing.
Jesse put his foot down on Roberts shoulder and pulled on his arm. After a few grunts and one guttural roar he
managed to rip the entire arm off.
Jesse ripped the keys out of the hand and
threw them to the ground. He removed the
sleeve from the severed arm and used it to tie the wrist of the arm to his
belt.
Robert’s body began twitching and suddenly
his eyes opened. Seeing that Robert had
revived, Jesse looked down at him and said, “I’ll just save this for later.”
Looking at the two hungry corpses only feet
away Jesse told them, “He’s all yours.”
They waited no longer. They dove onto the new body and started
ripping pieces off it. Robert tried to
scream, but still, the hole in his neck prevented any noise from escaping.
Jesse calmly picked up the keys wishing, in
a way, that he’d not have killed the man.
“Fuck that. No sense giving a
shit about him,” he thought to himself. “He’d have died sooner or later. Everyone will. Another day, another arm.”
He got in the car but didn’t close the
door. He watched as Susan’s door was
broken into by three dead people. One
still remained in the trash can.
Silently he closed the car door and started the car. Before long he turned down a side street and
316 Maple was out of view, and out of mind.
