Brace the Door
Devon clutched his folding knife tighter as the mad man flung himself at the bathroom door. Even with his shoulder bracing it, the door shuttered and he doubted it would hold out much longer.
“What are we going to do?” his young wife asked. Tracy had backed away as far as the bathroom would allow. Her usual gruff punk rocker nature was buried by the terror of the blood covered man pummeling the door.
“I’m not sure,” Devon said through his clenched teeth. “But if this freak doesn’t lay off, I might have to kill him.”
Brace the Door
Tracy’s only answer was her horror filled face.
Another hard slam caused two of the screws to tumble out of the upper door hinge. Devon watched them roll in small circles on the floor and then lie still. “Either way, we’re going to have to make a choice soon.”
The next slam put a big crack through the middle of the door.
“Okay,” Devon started, “This is what we’re going to do. Trace, get into the bathtub right behind me. I’m going to wait and then fling the door open. That should surprise the guy. While I deal with his crazy ass, I want you to get out of here. You got it?”
She nodded.
Tracy
The man drew back for another slam and this time Devon let the door fly open. With a growl the man tumbled into the bathroom, lost his footing, and crashed against the sink.
Blood Head
“Stay down!” Devon yelled. When he saw the man had no intension of doing so, Devon fenced forward and stabbed the guy in the shoulder.
The man couldn’t have cared less and lunged for him.
“Son of a bitch!” Devon yelled and stabbed forward again. Between his anger and the man attacking without pause, Devon’s knife trust up to the hilt into the man’s heart.
Nothing. No effect.
No Effect
Once Tracy had moved past him, Devon found himself being backed into the space between the bathtub and the toilet. His fingers searched for something he could use as a weapon and came away with the top of the toilet. “Chew on this, dumb-ass,” he said as he brought the heavy lid down on the attacker’s head as hard as he could. The man collapsed with a sick moan.
For a moment Devon stood there panting. Looking down, he saw that man didn’t appear to be breathing and the knife remained embedded into his heart. Leaning over, he felt for a pulse. Tracy called his name, but he ignored her.
No pulse.
A hand reached out and grabbed his wrist.
Crawler
He let out an uncontrolled cry and jerked away. Without pausing, he rushed through the doorway and slammed the door shut.
“Devon, what is it? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but so’s that guy. He isn’t breathing, has no pulse. I stabbed him in the heart and smashed him over the head and he’s still trying to attack me.”
As if in answer, a scratching began at the base of the damaged door.
“See, the guy should be dead three times over, but he’s still trying to get us.”
“What should we do?”
“First things first,” Devon said and rushed over to the closet and grabbed up his old baseball bat. “I’ll keep guard outside of the door, but I want you to call 911.”
Without saying a word, she hurried to comply. Her cell phone glowed brightly in the shadowed room. “The line is busy. Maybe there’s some accident around here and that’s where this guy came from.”
“Maybe,” Devon said, as the scratching near his ankles grew louder. “Still, I don’t think we’ll get much sleep with this freak locked in our bathroom.”
Loud gunfire sounded and the couple shared a look.
Devon kept his voice even. “Tracy, could you please check to see that the doors are locked and then look out the windows and tell me if you see anything unusual.”
It only took thirty seconds for her to say, “Oh no!” and then hurry back to him. “Everything looks crazy outside. I see pillars of smoke and just a block away people are fighting in the streets.”
The scratching had grown to a banging.
“What does this all mean?” she asked.
“If nothing else, I think it means that for now, we’re on our own.”
And that was when the door swung open.
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Swarm
Death and Night and Blood
Devon turned the fan up one level higher and then hopped back onto his bed. Since his wife lay on the sofa, having passed out after drinking the healther half of a bottle of wine, he had decided to read a few pages of the horror novel his brother had given him.
In the novel a warrior fought against different races of serial killers as he rode across America on his motorcycle. The hero of the novel was dealing with two beings that killed people by possessing their bodies.
Death and Night and Blod
Devon had just reached a creepy part when his wife appeared out of the shadows behind him. “I just heard someone knock on the front door. None of your dumb-ass friends is supposed to drop by are they?”
He groaned. Only got two damn pages read. “What, at eleven? On a work night? No.”
She flowed into his arms, half silk, half flesh. “Whoever it was knocked like three times.”
He smiled down at her. “I’ll go check, why don’t you get into bed.”
She smiled back. “Be careful, but if it’s one of your friends kick their ass.”
Tracy
He rolled his eyes and headed past her into the hallway. On a lark he grabbed the folding knife he had bought at the gem show. Drawing near the door, he flicked it open. Bear chested, with just a pair of jeans on, he still felt the heat of the Tucson summer when the door opened.
The hot darkness attacked him like a living thing. Nothing lingered on his front porch or in the yard other than gravel, dirt, and two large palm trees.
After shutting and locking the door, he headed back inside. He thought about grabbing one last beer, but then saw Tracy had already turned off the bedroom light. Pausing only long enough to flick off a few lights, he soon joined her.
As he set the knife on his dresser, he wondered if she’d be ready for some fun, but his short absence had proved long enough for her to fall asleep again. He had to work in the morning anyway, so he figured he might as well just call it a night to.
She rolled onto her side and said, “Hold me.”
After adjusting his pillows, he joined her and took her small body into his arms. He didn’t hold her forever and rolled onto his back. After a little tossing, he drifted off
Something might have woken him up. He couldn’t be sure. Darkness still claimed the land.
A loud thunk sounded from the back of the house. He froze still and listened. He heard something else and then a loud tinging sound as a beer bottle bounced onto the kitchen floor.
“What is that?’ she asked.
He shushed her.
“Did you lock the back door?” She asked.
“What difference does it make,” he said under his breath,” you can just pull the damn thing open.”
A second later it was on him.
The tall dark shadow felt wet as Devon pushed himself away from the growling man.
It came at him again.
Being naked didn’t help him feel more secure and holding up the blanket between him and the figure just caused the brutish man to tear it aside. Tracy had already tumbled off the other side of the bed and Devon joined her. When the growling freak got onto the bed on all fours on their bed, Devon grabbed the mattress and lifted it as high as he could. Once he got it three feet of the bed, he pushed forward, with all his strength, and the man hit the floor. Devon kept pushing until the mattress fell on top of the guy.
It kept growling and Devon saw that instead of being stunned, the man had already begun to crawl out from under the mattress.
Then he remembered the knife he had left on the dresser.
Tracy had already fled into the bathroom and had turned to light on.
The light helped him see his knife, but it also helped him make out more of the man as his intruder freed himself. The first thing that stabbed into his conscious was the blood. The man’s shirt dripped with strings of blood. The side of its neck looked torn away.
He had two thoughts, what sort of madness is this and this guy should be already dead.
With a yell, Devon jumped onto the mattress. This pinned the man’s legs for a moment and allowed Devon to grab his knife.
But then the bleeding man grabbed his ankle.
Devon pulled free at the cost off ribbons of his flesh being flailed away. “Son of a bitch,” he yelled.
“Devon, hurry in here.”
He suffered a moment of indecision and then hurried into the bathroom.
She locked the door seconds before the man’s large body collided with it. The door shook.
Devon flicked opened his knife. “Great, now we’re trapped.”
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Eternal Aftermath
The Climax of Rolling Apocalypse!!
Rollie would never be sure how Jack could have fought his way through a dozen infected freaks, but there he was driving a monster-sized pickup through the gathering horde of blood drenched cannibals.
View from the Roof
He yelled up at them while meaty slaps smacked against the side of his ride. “I have to keep moving. I’m going to idle on the other side and try to attract them to me. I’ll race back here in about a minute, but you need to be ready to jump!” Then, without waiting for an answer, he took off.
“That’s an awful long way down,” Sammy said.
Sammy
“Yeah, maybe twelve feet as long as you hit the bed,” Will said.
Steve spoke up. “What other choice do we have? I’d rather be on the move than trapped and surrounded. Besides, even if you got hurt, you’d be safe as long as the truck stays moving.’
Will looked at Rollie. “Are you okay with this?”
Will
“Yeah, I think so. I’m sure as hell not going to stay up here alone.”
His boyfriend nodded. “Okay, I’ll jump first. I might be able to help the others and maybe fight those things off.”
“Then we should lower the girls,” Steve said. “With our help on both sides it should be safer.”
They heard Jack honking the horn on the other side of the building. The bouncer was right. Most of the infected on the ground moved his way.
Once they heard a screech of tires, Will prepared for his jump by dangling his legs over the edge of the roof. “Here goes!” Will curled into a ball to absorb the impact, but then stood up quickly. “I’m good. Give me Sammy.”
“No, take Zoe first!” Steve yelled. He hurried his girlfriend to the edge and said, “Come on, hurry, hurry.”
But he rushed her too fast and she slipped and didn’t jump far enough to land in the bed of the truck. Instead, with a cry, she plummeted to the pavement.
Most of the insane infected had followed the honking, but about a half dozen lingered and they all moved in toward her.
“Zoë!” Steve yelled and then leapt into the back of the truck. He almost hit Will and Rollie’s lover had to dodge out of the bigger man’s way. Steve cried out when he landed and appeared to have hurt his right ankle.
“Zoë!” he yelled again, while sticking his arm of the side, “Grab my hand.”
“I can’t, my leg.”
Two of the infected moved closer.
Steve jumped off the truck and tackled the closest one. Soon they wrestled on the ground.
Will looked down and then up at them. “Come on you two.”
“Okay,” Rollie said. “You first.” He helped her over the edge as far as he could and she cried in fear, but landed on the bed of the truck.
The other four infected drew in on the sides of the truck and more came at them from every direction.
Zombies Surrounding the Truck
“Rollie!” Will pleaded.
With a shout, Rollie leapt into the back of the pickup. The fall jarred him, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. What did surprise him was when Jack pulled away as soon as he had landed.
“What is he…” Rollie began, but the words died in his mouth then he saw that the infected had already begun to tear Steve and Zoe apart. Their unintended sacrifice might have been the one thing that had given the rest of them a chance to escape.
Jack rushed from the parking lot on to Campbell Road, but chaos ruled in every direction. Heading north, he didn’t stop until he reached a place that looked free of cannibals.
The truck skidded to a stop. “Sammy, come up here, please,” he said.
Jack
She hurried to join him.
“Hang on tight guys. My friend, Travis, lives on the end of the city, so his house should be safer than most.”
A moment later Jack tore up the hill leaving the stumbling infected in his wake.
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Traviss Ranch
On the Roof, but not Zombie Proof
Raquel screamed again and ran for the folding ladder that the rest of them had used to climb through the skylight.
Rollie stood close enough to see she moved too fast to slow herself and she and the ladder toppled to the floor. She struggled to get up, but both the bitten woman, Julie, and the big bouncer, Diamond, had become those things. They fell on top of her.
She struggled and screamed, but Rollie knew how it would end. Soon her screaming was replaced by the sounds of brutal tearing and chewing.
The others had gathered around the broken skylight and Rollie held Sammy as she started to cry. This wasn’t soft weeping, but the long uncontrolled gasping jags where she could barely catch their breath. On the ground, on all sides of the roof, the sounds of her crying caused the moaning of the infected below to rise in volume.
Will broke the silence. “Crap” he said. “Not too many of us left now.”
“That’s why we need to have a plan to get out of here,” Steve said.
Will looked over at Rollie for a moment, then faced Steve. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
Steve’s eyes moved around the roof. “Well, ah… if we could get one of these air conditioners free, we could drop it down on their heads and at least get back stage again.”
“That’s a long drop,” Zoë said.
“Only one of us has to make it,” Steve began. “Then that person can raise the ladder.”
“Yeah, after we clear out those freaks,” Will said.
“What about Raquel?” Sammy wept.
“I think she’s already gone, honey,” Rollie said, while hugging her tighter.
“I told you it was the bites,” Steve grumbled.
Rollie glared at him. “Try to show some compassion. We’re losing people we care about here.”
Steve just made a face and walked toward a large swamp cooler. “Shit, this is going to be hard to remove without the right tools.”
While Will moved over to help, Zoe walked closer to Sammy. She touched her arm before saying, “I’m sorry about your friend.”
“She was my best friend,” Sammy said through her tears.
Sammy
Below them the infected had stopped feasting and began to growl up at them.
“Damn it!” Steve exclaimed. “This piece of shit rusted onto this roof a decade ago. It would take a hack saw and thirty minutes to get this free.”
Rollie glanced into the room below them and saw that the half-eaten form of Raquel had gotten onto her feet and had joined the other two infected in their sick moaning. He hurried to move Sammy away from the opening.
Steve said, “Well what the hell are we going to do now?”
And that was when a vehicle started honking below them. Sammy hurried to the side and surprised Rollie by smiling. “Hey everyone, it’s Jack I think it’s Jack!”
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Don’t Let the Bite Victim Hang with Your Girlfriend
After Rollie and Will used everything from Marshall stacks to scrap wood to barricade the two doors leading into Scallywags’ back stage, they hurried to find Steve. Steve, with the help of his girlfriend and the two waitresses, had been working on getting the skylight open.
The men arrived to find him struggling at the top of a folding ladder. “This damn skylight is jammed or something.”
“Maybe it needs a key,” Rollie suggested.
“The hell with that,” Will said. “Just break the f-in’ thing open.”
“But what if it’s a toxic gas that’s causing all this?” Sammy said.
Will said, “I really think it’s the bites, hun.”
Steve came down the ladder. “Speaking of which, how are those two?”
Raquel answered. “Diamond found a first aid kit and he’s taking care of himself and that woman, Julie.”
Raquel
Steve’s eyes flew around the room, as he said, “Well, I wish him all the luck in the world.” He found a crowbar on a table and snatched it up. “He’s going to need it.”
After climbing back up the ladder, he started hammering the opaque skylight with the crowbar. It didn’t take long for it to shatter and rain jagged crescents of white plastic down onto them. “I’m through and I’m going up. Stabilize that ladder.”
Looking back, he said, “I don’t care if you guys want to come up, but send Zoë up first. I don’t want her down there without me.”
As Zoë climbed up, Rollie looked at Sammy. “How about you gals? You want to stay here?”
“You go,” Raquel said. “I’ll keep an eye on things down here.”
Will had already started up the ladder. Sammy and Rollie hurried to follow him.
After helping Sammy onto the roof, he saw the backs of the others, while they all did a Blair Witch impression as they looked down into the strip mail parking lot.
“What is it?” Sammy began, “Oh my God!”
Below them spread a sight straight out of a mad man’s worst nightmare. Packs of the blood soaked cannibals roamed in groups sometimes a dozen strong. Others banged on the interior of their car windows with red fists, like they remained too brain dead to figure out how to open the doors.
Lock your Doors
A shout came up from below. “Oh thank God!” a woman said.
A man stood next to her right below them. He clutched at his bleeding arm. “Are you guys normal? You have to help us. Lower a rope or something.”
“Were you bit?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, we need help,” the man said.
“Not if you’ve been bit. Keep moving,” Steve said.
“Are you kidding?” the woman said.
“No, keep moving.”
A group of the infected rounded the southwest corner of Scallywags and started lurching toward the couple. “You son of a bitch!’ the man shouted and then took off running with his woman’s hand in his.
“I can’t believe-” Sammy began, but was interrupted by the sounds of Raquel screaming below.
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Teeth
Eternal Aftermath, A Zombie Apocalypse 