I wanna get this down while it’s still fresh, especially as I’m not quite sure what the future holds … or if there’ll even be one.
My name’s Marvin Whatley, and I figure I’ll begin at the juicy part, when I finally reached Pam’s double-wide at dusk and stormed inside to save her life, to take her away from all this, to make her my own once and for all.
My platoon sergeant would’ve called it my objective or my mission. Either word fits, seeing as how in the past twenty-four hours the whole world had gone bat-shit crazy.
Good news, Pam was there. Bad news, her face had been completely chewed off. As had all her limbs, save for one arm.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not going into much more detail. Not an easy thing to see, your childhood sweetheart reduced to a writhing, faceless torso on the floor of her tore-up trailer house, the only recognizable part of her being the bloodied-up Lynyrd Skynyrd concert T-shirt you’d bought her on a date, sophomore year.
Here I’m back from Nam only one day, and already I’m fightin’ another war. And this one I sure as hell didn’t sign on for. Saw a lot of blood and guts over there along the Mekong, but nothing like this. This is a whole other deal.
Did I mention the dead started rising yesterday? Started eating people, too, which made other dead people rise, like some kind of bass-ackwards epidemic. They’re saying the cause might be radiation from a Venus probe or some damn thing.
Doesn’t matter.
All I knew at that moment was that Pam had been half eaten; she’d turned into one of those undead things, and would probably be making a run at eating me if she’d still had the limbs to get herself up off the linoleum. As it was, about all she could do was wiggle around in her own pulp.
My heart was broke clean in two. I wanted to tear my hair out, break a lot of shit, cry until I was cried out.
But I’m a soldier.
I’d seen buddies get blown to bits. Learned real quick in that goddamn jungle to survive first, cry later.
I’d heard you could kill one of those ghoulish things only by destroying their brain. If I’d had a gun I’d’ve shot Pam in the head right then and there rather than let her go on wallowing in her own entrails. But I didn’t have a gun, and there wasn’t time to think up another way to put her out of her misery because through the open door I could see some thirty or more ghouls approaching the front of the trailer in that slow, drunken walk of theirs.
Survival instinct took over.
Stepping over Pam, I moved to the small window above the turntable and saw they were approaching from the back, too. The trailer was surrounded.
I returned to the kitchenette, and as I was rifling through the drawers in search of anything that might be lethal, something clamped down on my ankle.
Pam. She’d managed to schooch across the floor and take hold of me with her one remaining arm.
Jerking my knee up, I kicked free of her grasp before she could get her teeth sunk in. I snatched a butcher knife from outta one of the drawers, backed into the corner of the trailer, and took a moment to consider my situation and what I should do about it.
I was horrified by the sight of what had become of Pam, but also fearful I might wind up just like her—undead.
Been there, thank you. A year spent slogging through that godforsaken Delta, tired, hungry, wet, too damn far from home, sometimes not caring if the next booby trap had my name on it. That’s as close to being undead as I ever wanna get. I for sure as hell didn’t wanna become a bloodied-up goddamn ghoul craving human flesh.
While such a fate certainly didn’t appeal, I had an even better reason to survive: I aimed to get the fucker responsible for me not making it to my girl in time to save her life. But more on that later.
I figured I could take out one or two ghouls with the butcher knife, maybe break off a chair leg and use it to clobber a few more. Trouble was, that still left too damn many.
The odds of success sucked.
Seeing as how they’d honed in on the trailer, they clearly smelled blood. Living blood. My blood.
Desperate for ideas, I looked down at Pam and damned if that sweet girl didn’t present a possible solution—camo. Here I’d been dreading the notion of winding up just like her when it suddenly occurred to me that becoming like her might be my only way out of this. What if I could mask my appearance, my smell, so I’d be just like one of them?
With no time to think it over I stepped over Pam again and toppled to the narrow floor space just beyond her, where a good deal of her innards still lay in a glistening heap. Fighting not to puke, I rolled around in it, covering myself head to foot with gore, even taking fistfuls of the stuff and slathering it across my face the way I’d once smeared on jungle mud for camouflage.
About the time I got back to my feet, the first flesh eater to make it up the steps was standing on the threshold. His face was caked with blood and his spleen was dangling from his midsection.
It was Tidwell Sweeny, who rotated tires over at the Conoco. I knew him right off from his greasy coveralls and cauliflower ears.
As he lumbered into the trailer, I froze, held my breath, and let my jaw hang slack just like his was, trying to look dead.
Or undead.
Through gray lifeless eyes, he seemed to study me with no visible hostility. It looked as though my ruse had worked, that my life force—or whatever you wanna call it—was undetectable beneath all the blood and entrails.
Then he lunged for me.
Jaws chomping, the sumbitch went straight for my jugular. I managed to dodge him and in the same motion, acting on a soldier’s instinct, drove the butcher knife all the way to the hilt into the base of his skull. The fat bastard toppled like a stack of retreads.
My rush of victory didn’t last long, ’cause the rest of the ghouls were still steadily approaching. I could hear ’em now. Christ, I could smell ’em.
If Tidwell Sweeny’s actions had been any indication, appearance alone wasn’t enough for them to mistake me for one of their kind. I needed …
Goddamn, I needed to become one of them.
I recalled meeting a guy at a bar in Da Nang. Davie something-or-other. A sniper. Special Forces. He’d been about to ship out, headed home after two tours.
When I asked him the secret to going home alive, he told me he’d served both tours on a strict diet of raw fish, rice, and green tea. Gook food. Claimed that in the jungle the enemy could smell a stomach full of good ol’ American pancakes and hot dogs from a mile off. Said it was a body chemistry thing, as if the smell seeped right out of our pores. So he put gook food into his bloodstream, and swore up and down it’d saved his life.
I’d forgotten to ask him how long it took for this body chemistry thing to kick in, but I was pretty sure I was about to find out.
Just as another ghoul stumbled into the trailer, I tore off my first bite of Tidwell Sweeny’s spleen. I’d like to say it tasted like chicken. Truth is, it tasted like shit. Warm, salty, chewy. Godawful.
But the flesh-eating version of Shelly Cleaver—night manager over at the roller rink—paid me absolutely no mind. Neither did the next ghoul to wander in, or the next. Maybe it was a bloodstream thing after all.
For good measure, I choked down a few more hunks of spleen and, just like that, I’d become just another face in the undead crowd. Soon a good fifty of us at least were shambling around outside the trailer. By now it was full dark, which I hoped would help me get hell and gone from there.
I started drag-stepping my way toward the edge of the group, planning to sprint free as soon as I was clear of the park’s main gate.
But before I reached it, a gunshot rang out and the skull of the ghoul beside me burst open, sprayin’ brains and hair. The man fell to the ground with a thud.
My army grunt impulse was to hit the deck, but somehow I managed to remain standing, ghoul-like, as I turned toward the source of the gunfire.
Soon as I did, some half a dozen pairs of headlights flashed on and more rifles than I could count began firing. Bodies dropped all around me as the headshots hit their marks.
I stood rigid, watching the shooters move closer as they reloaded. They were uniformed lawmen—all Stetsons and swagger. By the time they’d split the distance between us, I could hear their laughter.
And I’ll be damned if leading the pack wasn’t the same sumbitch I’d vowed not five minutes before to seek and destroy—Assistant Under-Deputy Shane Garrett.
He was the one that kept me from saving Pam in time. He was the reason I’d never kiss my girl again, hold her tight, make sweet love to her.
Garrett may not have killed Pam, but it was because of him that she’d wound up a flesh eater, which is a much worse fate than death.
’Least in death, Pam would still have her soul.
I wanted to charge him then and there, but I’d have been brained before getting anywhere near him. No way was I going to break character now. The sumbitch would have shot me regardless, but I’d rather let him think I was already dead than give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d taken my life hisself.
As the lawmen approached, they kept their rifles shouldered. Every couple seconds another few shots rang out and more bodies around me fell. In no time the gunmen were upon those of us few ghouls still standing, close enough for me to smell the menthol in their snuff. They were all smiles as they lowered their rifles. Clearly, ghoul shooting had become sport for these assholes.
I let my eyes glaze over and dropped my jaw to allow a red rope of drool to stretch from my bottom lip. Garrett spat chaw through a sinister grin as he scanned our pale, blood-smeared faces. When his eyes fell on me I made a point not to blink, to literally look straight through him, even as I watched his grin widen.
“Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” he said.
No shit, I thought.
“What?” asked one of the deputies.
Garrett pointed at me. “It’s that fucker, Whatley.”
“The soldier boy you dragged into the station house last e’ning? The one who threatened to separate you from your privates first chance he got?”
When a few of the others chuckled, Garrett swung his rifle their way. “Any o’ you still think that’s funny?”
None did, apparently. The snickering stopped.
Garrett lowered his rifle. His gaze shifted to Pam’s trailer. Giving us ghouls a wide berth, he approached it, climbed the cinder block steps, and looked inside. He remained there for a moment, muttering something under his breath I couldn’t make out. As he turned and came back down the steps his grin returned.
“Shitass sure wouldn’t have wanted the bitch now,” he said with a shrug.
The bastard. For him it wasn’t even about having Pam anymore. It was just about making sure I couldn’t have her either.
He looked my way again. Lord knows how, but I kept my cool, staring into space, drooling. The other ghouls who were still upright were getting restless and beginning to close in around the deputies.
One of them said to Garrett, “The paddy wagon’s already full, boss. It won’t hold all these here.”
“Finish ’em off,” Garrett ordered.
When I heard the click of cocking triggers all around, my gut clenched. But before anyone fired, Garrett pointed me out.
“All except for him. We’re taking him along with us.”
“Why bother?” asked the deputy.
Beneath his hat brim, Garrett’s smirk stretched into a wide smile. “’Cause I want my trophy.”
* * *
It wasn’t an actual paddy wagon, only an old Chevy flatbed with a high steel railing. There were already a good thirty ghouls squirming around in there when two of the deputies grabbed me by the seat of my Levis and tossed me onto the pile.
The ghouls stunk something fierce. Most were pretty docile, but a few—Mayor Felder and Reverend Pruitt in particular—were downright ornery, snapping their jaws at anything that moved. Hunger pangs, I figured.
Blaring out of the truck’s radio was a recorded message running on a loop, ordering anyone seeking refuge to report to the Slocum spread. We were headed west on Route 6, so I figured that’s where Garrett and his cronies were taking us.
Garrett was riding shotgun in the truck’s cab along with three deputies. Three more sat on the roof, rifles across their laps, spittin’ into their dip cups, keeping an eye on us ghouls.
About all I could do was stare blankly into space and work at holding down Tidwell Sweeny’s spleen. One of the ghouls had discarded a severed foot, which I claimed, occasionally gnawing on the pinky toe to look busy.
I guess I should fill you in on what happened last night and how I came to be in this fix.
I was only a few hours back on U.S. soil. The sun was just going down as I sped across the county line, heading for Pam’s place, a bottle of Boone’s Farm and a bunch of flowers in the passenger seat. I couldn’t get to her fast enough.
But about a mile shy of the trailer park, a squad car roared up behind me, lights flashing.
It was Garrett. Like he’d been on the lookout for me. Probably paid the guy at the garage where I’d stored my Ford dually to notify him as soon I got back in town, ’cause he knew that as soon as I’d reunited with Pam, I’d be coming for his ass.
This deal with me and Pam and Garrett started back in high school. Bottom line, Pam chose me over him, and Garrett never got over it.
After graduation, I got drafted; Garrett, rather conveniently, got a 4F deferment.
Fallen arches, my ass.
Anyway, no sooner had I gone to war, Garrett moved in on Pam. Or tried to. She fought off his advances. Then when he started knocking her around, she fought for real. She’d always been a fighter; it was one of the reasons I loved her.
But sometimes, he got in a good pop. She mailed me pictures of bruises and black eyes. Made my blood boil, but being stuck in Nam there was nothing I could do.
Let’s just say it was a long-ass tour of duty for me, and that’s before you factor in little details like killing the enemy and surviving.
So, last night at dusk, Garrett’s stopped me for speeding, which I wasn’t. Then he pulls a half dozen unpaid parking tickets out of his ass, all of them trumped up. A quick swing of his billy club into my rear taillight, and boom, he’s got me for driving an unsafe vehicle.
Looking back, I reckon I was already on my way to jail by this point … even before I told him to go fuck himself.
When we got to the sheriff’s office, he didn’t even allow me my one phone call, which would have been to Pam to tell her to hold off putting the corn bread in.
Turned out I never actually made it to a jail cell. Garrett was still writing me up and I was still cussing him from the chair beside his desk when all of a sudden Tina Gladwell’s Dodge Dart came crashing through the south wall of the building, plowing through cubicles in an explosion of shattered wood and glass.
That alone was enough to shift attention away from the future I had planned for Garrett’s manhood, but when Tina’s pigtailed four-year-old daughter Milly came tumbling out of the broken windshield gnawing hungrily at her mother’s severed arm, well, all hell broke loose inside the station house.
In the confusion, I managed to escape, but then spent the next twenty-four hours dodging ghouls, fires, car wrecks, panicked citizens, and police roadblocks, still with only one thing on my mind: getting to Pam.
But, thanks to Garrett, I’d got there too late. I couldn’t save Pam, but I sure as hell was gonna avenge her. As that makeshift paddy wagon was steered off pavement and onto dirt, I made a vow to see him dead. He needed killin’ and needed it bad.
The Slocum property was a scene of total chaos. Emergency vehicles, triage tents, frantic citizens searching for loved ones, public officials with bullhorns, shouting for calm and control when … Who the fuck were they kiddin’?
But, nearer to where they stopped the paddy wagon, it was practically a carnival.
Failed cattlemen and failed pool hustlers, Lenny and Delroy Slocum were half brothers (same mama) who now ran a deer lease and taxidermy outfit on the family’s four hundred acres of cracked dirt and scrub brush. To my knowledge no one had ever actually killed a deer on the lease—or seen one for that matter—but from what I eventually gathered, it was open season on the lease and business was booming … because tonight it wasn’t deer in crosshairs; it was ghouls.
Leave it to the sorry Slocum brothers to turn a profit out of an apocalypse.
Floodlights run by coughing portable generators shone down on a dump truck that was tipping some fifty flesh eaters into a corral where twice again that many were shuffling around.
One of them was Flint Hatfield, a tight-fisted loan officer at the First National who always wore a silk hanky in the pocket of his sport coat, which now had a blood-drenched clavicle poking out of it. ’Bout the time I recognized him, a shot rang out and his bald head split open like an overripe pumpkin.
Rousing applause rose from the crowd that surrounded the corral—your basic bikers, truckers, and burnouts, standing three-deep against the split rail, drinking beer and placing bets.
From the deer blind above the corral came the amplified voice of Delroy Slocum. “Hell of a shot, there, Bobby Ray, hell of a shot. Would’ve liked to plug ole Flint Hatfield myself,” he added. “After all, the limp-dick did work in foreclosures!”
Laughter all around.
“We appreciate yer bidness, Bobby Ray,” added Lenny Slocum, taking the bullhorn from his brother. “And remember, that single-shot kill wins you ten percent off the optional taxidermy package.”
Delroy reclaimed the bullhorn. “All right, who’s next? Step right up! Three shots, fifty dollars! Bag the ghoul of your choice, then have it stuffed to put in your den.”
Above the whoops and hollers, I heard Garrett say to his deputies, “Corral’s too crowded. We’ll dump this last bunch here soon as the herd’s been thinned out some.”
The deputies nodded and lit smokes. One of them asked, “Them Slocums are gonna give us our cut, right?”
“Bet your ass they’re gonna.” Garrett smiled. “And I’m gonna get that discount on my trophy.”
As he turned my way, I went back to gnawing on the foot, hoping my eyes still looked vacant and empty, and weren’t revealing my disbelief.
Suddenly my ears caught the thump of running footfalls approaching the truck. And then a voice that nearly jolted me clean outta my Tony Lamas.
“Where is Marvin?”
Pam! My Pam! Alive!
“I know you’ve seen him, Garrett. Where is he?”
Crying. Desperate. Panicked, even. But it was definitely Pam, and she was very much alive.
Both my heartbeat and my breathing went into overdrive. I risked blowing my cover to cut my eyes as far to the left as they would go. There she was, intact, standing face-to-face with Garrett.
She wore tight frayed jeans, sneakers, and an old flannel button-down, untucked. Her long brown hair was pulled up off her neck with a clip. She looked frantic and scared and beautiful.
Garrett was as shocked to see her as I was. “Wha—what the hell are—”
Pam cut off his stammering. “Answer my question, damn you. Where is Marvin?”
He blinked a few times. “I went to your house. You were … dead.”
Pam just looked at him, shaking her head, confused. Then, in realization, she covered her face with her hands. When her head came back up, tears were streaming.
“Oh, Becky Lynn…” she said.
Suddenly it made sense. Becky Lynn did manicures with Pam over at the CUTEicle. They’re best friends. They’re also the same age and shape, both brunettes. Chew off three limbs and the face of one, and it’d be pretty easy to mistake her for the other. And they’ve always shared clothes, which explained the Skynyrd T-shirt.
It seemed that Garrett was still trying to sort it all out when Pam wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and pulled herself together. “Somebody said you hauled Marvin off to jail. Where is he, Garrett? What’d you do to him?”
Garrett finally snapped to. “Nothing he didn’t have comin’.”
“What’d you do, you bastard?” She started beating on his barrel chest with her small fists.
I could have married her right there.
Her name-calling—not to mention the drubbing—pissed Garrett off. He roughly took hold of her wrists.
I became a coil, prepared to spring.
Garrett sneered. “Your boyfriend’s dead.”
“You’re a liar!”
“Am not!”
“Liar!”
“I’m not lying, you crazy bitch, the worthless fucker’s dead!”
I’d have jumped him right there had Pam not beat me to the punch. Literally. Her left hook landed square on Garrett’s jaw. I’m sure Garrett would have hit her back if by now the commotion hadn’t drawn a crowd.
He looked around at all those gawkers. The sumbitch was gutless enough to beat up a woman, but not fool enough to do it in public. He turned back to Pam.
“All right, you don’t believe me?” The crowd gasped as he whipped out his Glock. He marched around to the flatbed’s tailgate and swung it open. Five or six ghouls separated me from him. He fired a bullet through each of their skulls, one right after the other. Then he climbed onto the flatbed and stepped over the fallen bodies to get to me.
Yanking me up by the hair, he spun me around so Pam could have a good look at my undead self.
“No!” she screamed. “Oh, god, please no!”
I don’t know how I managed to stay limp and not reveal the pain I felt over causing her such anguish.
But Garrett was so lathered, if he’d known I was alive, he’d have killed me instantly. By playing dead, at least I had a slim chance of living. Or so I hoped.
He chucked me off the flatbed. I hit the dirt like a rag doll. I got to my feet on my own, but made a slow show of it, keeping my movements labored and uncoordinated. Ghoul-like.
Pam was sobbing and reaching out for me. It took a couple of bull-necked deputies to hold her back.
The crowd had grown but become quieter. Even the Slocum brothers had stopped their hawking and made their way over.
Head cocked sideways, one arm dropped, and the other bent awkwardly across my stomach, I pretended to be unaware of all these goings-on. Truth was, I never let Pam out of my sight.
Garrett jumped off the flatbed and bore down on her. “Look at your precious Marvin now. You wanna snuggle up with that?”
Through all this, I’d managed to keep a grip on the severed foot. For effect, I now brought it to my mouth and bit a good chunk out of the arch.
When I did that I noticed a sudden change in Pam, as though a switch had flipped. It was like she had suddenly accepted what she didn’t want to believe.
In a voice filled with more resolve than sadness, she said to Garrett, “He was ten times the man you’ll ever be.”
With that, she pulled the pistol from the nearest deputy’s holster and cocked it.
Holy shit, she’s gonna kill the sumbitch! I thought.
Till she pointed the goddamn bore straight at my face.
This deal was about to get mortal.
Pam can shoot good. Real good. I oughta know; I taught her how. Once saw her shoot a thimble off a fence post from four hundred yards in a high wind. That’s how good she is. So I doubted she’d miss me from twelve feet, give or take.
Things happened quick then. The bystanders panicked and scattered out of her line of fire. Garrett leaned over Pam and growled, “Go ahead … finish him.”
Her intention was clear: the mercy kill. The same thing I’d wanted for the ghoul I’d mistaken for her back in the trailer house.
But at the moment, it wasn’t mercy I was needin’.
Desperate, I opened my mouth to holler out, but before I could even make a sound, Pam shot me in the head.
* * *
I have no recollection of blacking out, but I reckon it’s just as well I did, because when I woke up, I was at the bottom of a pile of mostly headless torsos and severed appendages, all dripping red and reeking to high heaven. I must’ve been assumed dead and lumped in with the rest.
I had a mouthful of jellified blood. My face hurt like holy hell. A tentative probe of my tongue revealed that Pam’s shot had passed straight through my left cheek without killing me or even nicking a single tooth. A goddamn miracle if ever there was one.
It was dark beneath that mass of gore, but there was just enough hazy moonlight coming through the window for me to make out all the glassy eyes looking down on me—the lifeless gazes of stuffed bucks, birds, badgers, and bass. The poor suckers were mounted on every inch of wall space.
I was inside the Slocums’ taxidermy shack. Before I had time to chew over what that might mean to my immediate future, the door creaked open.
“Marvin?”
It was Pam’s voice, whispering my name.
“Marvin? Where’re you at?”
I tried to speak, but all that came out were gurgly sounds.
“Oh, baby!” Pam rushed to the heap of decaying flesh pinning me down and furiously began tossing aside the spare parts.
When I was free and she managed to pull me upright, I took her in my arms and squeezed her tight. For a few sweet moments all I could do was hold her face between my hands and look at her to insure that she was real … that we were together at last and still alive.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Got here as quick as I could. Had to wait till things quieted down, you know.”
I swallowed some of that congealed crud in my mouth. “How … how long was I out? What time is it?”
“A little after midnight.”
I smiled as best I could with a hole in one cheek. “I’m just glad your shot was off, honey.”
“Off, hell! I had plenty of time to aim ’cause you took so damn long to open your mouth. Thought you never would.”
Smart girl. She’d waited for me to try and call out before she fired, creating a clear target into my gaping mouth. To the witnesses, it had looked like a prize-worthy kill shot. For me, it had meant deliverance.
Of course, it was much later that I pieced all this together. At that moment, my mind was still in a swirling fog.
“But how did you know I was still … me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because, sweetie, you bite into a human foot the same girlie way you eat corn on the cob … pinkies raised.”
She’d been ribbing me about that for years. Never imagined that one day it would be the giveaway that saved my life.
“We have to go.” She pushed me toward the door. “My car’s outside, gassed up, with the engine running.”
We slipped out and headed toward the rear of the shack. The floodlights had been turned off, so we had darkness on our side.
But it didn’t matter anyhow, ’cause the ranch was deserted now. Those seeking safety from the ghouls had retreated to the tent city that had sprung up on the other side of the main road.
We were only steps away from Pam’s idling Corvair when headlight beams drew my attention. Another paddy wagon was pulling onto the Slocums’ place, crammed axle-to-axle with a fresh crop of flesh eaters. Even from that distance, I could hear their hungry growling.
Pam must’ve heard ’em, too. She tugged me toward that gassed-up Corvair. “Come on, darlin’, we gotta go while we got the chance.”
She was right. ’Course she was. We needed to get gone. But damn my hide if I didn’t stop short.
“Hold up, baby. I got an idea.”
* * *
It was close to 2:00 a.m. when I busted down the door of Garrett’s one-room shithole just east of the lake, catching him reclined in his La-Z-Boy, where he’d passed out drunk, still in uniform, a twelve-gauge across his lap, a Penthouse splayed over his chest.
Once his eyes focused on me, I said, “Time for you to die.”
He fumbled for the shotgun, but I drove the toe of my boot up hard under his chin. He was still spitting out teeth as I cuffed his wrists behind the recliner with his own handcuffs.
When I came around to face him, he looked equal parts shocked, scared, and pissed.
“Whatha hell’s zis?” he mumbled through bloody gums. “You were dead, sure’s shit!”
“No, Garrett, I’m not dead. Not undead, neither. I’m alive and well.” I brought myself eye level and smiled wide enough to stretch the bullet hole in my cheek. “But you’re fucked.”
He struggled against the handcuffs as I headed for the door. Soon as I cleared it, I gave a sharp whistle.
An engine thundered. Tires spun. A truck roared out of the darkness, coming on fast … in reverse. I leaped off the porch to get clear.
The truck had built up a good head of steam by the time its back end plowed through the front wall of the house, tailgate open.
When the dust settled, I could see Pam through the truck’s rear window, grinning at me from behind the wheel. She kicked open the passenger door. I climbed in, shouting, “Gun it, baby!”
She jammed the stick into first, popped the clutch, and floored the gas. The flatbed lurched, sending its cargo of flesh eaters tumbling out the lowered tailgate.
The last we heard from Garrett were strangled screams coming from beneath the horde of feasting ghouls.
He was begging me for a mercy kill.
I’d run plumb out of mercy.
* * *
That was four hours and two hundred miles ago. The last report we heard on the radio was that the undead had been largely contained in the area … but that there was still no word from across the state line.
As I sit here writing this, in a ransacked room in an abandoned motel, listening to the sounds of Pam’s fitful breathing while she sleeps, watching the candlelight dance across her pretty face, I can’t rightly say what’s in store for us. I only know we’ll find a way to survive … together.
And I’ll tell you one more thing I know from experience. Being undead ain’t anywhere near the same thing as being alive. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in that somewhere.