EATERS: THE BEGINNING

by

MichelleDePaepe

AMAZON EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

MichelleDePaepe on Amazon

Copyright © 2010 by MichelleDePaepe

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Chapter One

The fire crackled and popped, sending a shower of sparks up into the night to compete with the stars. Cheryl pushed another marshmallow onto her stick and held it over the pit. She waited until it charred and began to ooze before she pulled it out and blew out the blue flame.

“Is that one for me?”

She looked over at Mark, her fiancée, reclining in his lawn chair as he opened one eye. Several minutes ago, she’d thought he’d gone to sleep. With his eyes closed, and his body twitching, she figured that he was miles away in some nightmare land, reliving explosions and sniper attacks. “You already had about a dozen. I figured you’d passed out from the sugar load.”

“I didn’t know you were counting,” he said as he yawned and stretched.

She laughed and handed him the stick. Mark was fond of calling himself a ‘growing boy’ who needed lots of meat and sugar to fuel his biceps. It was those two guns and the rifle in the back of his pickup that made her feel relatively safe out here in a lone campsite fifty miles west of Denver.

As he sat up and licked the black and white goo from his fingers, she looked at the moon high over the mountain peaks. It seemed like a white lantern, hung on a peg in the sky like a grownup’s nightlight. The previous nights had been windy, but tonight it was still, like the earth was holding its breath for something. “It’s so quiet out tonight. ”

“Well, enjoy it, ‘cause you’re heading back to the rat race bright and early tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I was trying to forget that for a couple more hours.” That was true, but in reality, after three nights of grungy camping, she was ready to go back to civilization. She knew Mark wasn’t. This was their reunion vacation after his year-long tour of duty in Afghanistan. He said that he wanted to be alone with her and decompress without distractions from other people. She also knew that he wanted to be far away from the sound of exploding fireworks from the 4th of July celebrations, because they reminded him of the bad kind of fireworks that could cause a sudden loss of life or limb. For that reason, she agreed to the getaway in the wilderness, despite her city girl reservations.

It was Sunday. They were supposed to have headed back today, but he bargained with her to buy themselves another night, saying that if they left around 6:30 a.m. Monday morning, she’d have enough time to shower and get to work. Then, he could unpack their gear later that day.

After roasting and eating another marshmallow, she smacked at a mosquito hovering over her head. The damn things seemed to love her blood, even though she’d doused herself in a vat of repellent. But, they didn’t seem to bother Mark at all. “I’m getting eaten alive out here,” she said as she wiped a red smear off her shoulder. “I’m going back in the tent.”

“You might as well get naked now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

They made love as the orange glow of the embers in the fire pit outside died down to wisps of smoke. It wasn’t as frenzied as the first couple of nights. It was softer, more slow and tender, like it had been a year ago. They melded together like jigsaw pieces then snuggled into each other’s warmth.

She had trouble falling asleep after that. While Mark was snoring away, she heard a twig snap nearby followed by a deep grunt. That set her on edge, wondering what sort of animal could be prowling near the camp. She knew there were bears and mountain lions in the area—that was a given in the Rocky Mountains. Attacks seemed rare, because you rarely heard about them. But, statistics mean little when you are sleeping in a cloth tent that’s really not much better than lying out in the open. She reached across Mark’s bare hip and felt for his rifle just to reassure herself that it was there. He’d taught her to shoot it once when she braved accompanying him on an elk hunting trip, but that was a couple years ago, and she wasn’t sure any of that training or some of the self defense he’d taught her would be much good if she came face to face with a snarling beast and was paralyzed with fear.

Despite the day’s heat, it seemed to get colder with every passing second. She shivered as she strained to listen for any indication that an animal was near. But, after a few more minutes passed without a repeat of the sounds, her body relaxed, and she nestled closer to Mark’s warm body. Eventually, her alert ears yielded to the heaviness of her eyelids, and she fell asleep.

When she woke, the sky was still a dark shade of blue with dawn just cracking in a zigzag glow over the nearest peak. She reached over and found that Mark was gone.

As she unzipped the tent, she stepped out and said, “Geez what time is—”

Mark was wearing his boxers, holding his rifle with one hand and a cigarette with the other as he scraped back and forth at the dirt with his bare feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing. Was the pit still hot? Did the fire jump?”

“No.”

“Then what—”

She noticed the six-foot path that he’d cleared with his feet. It led from the fire pit straight up to the front of the tent.

“I heard something last night. It was animal tracks, wasn’t it? A bear?”

“No.”

“Come on. Don’t—”

“Let’s get going.”

He ignored the rest of her questions and began to pack up the tent.

She noticed that their food cache was still securely hanging from a high branch from a nearby tree. There were no claw marks in the bark, but it probably had been a bear, and Mark just didn’t want to scare her by admitting it. She shrugged it off. It didn’t matter now. The bear was probably long gone, and they were leaving anyway.

After putting on her shorts and tank top, she packed up the rest of her things and put her duffel bag on the floor in the front of the truck. The clock on the dashboard said 5:47 a.m., which meant they were leaving even earlier than they had to. She wondered why he was in a rush all of a sudden. But, with his grumpy attitude, she didn’t want to press him about it.

As they drove east, winding around curve after curve, towards the sun’s brightening glow, she was surprised at how many cars were going in the other direction so early in the morning. She figured they must be heading back home after spending the holiday weekend in the city.

Mark turned on the radio, tuned it to a rock station, and cranked the volume up a hair above her comfort level. She sunk down in her seat and leaned her head on one hand to muffle the sound of the screeching vocals.

For twenty minutes, he drove, nodding his head to the thumping bass guitar in each song, and didn’t talk to her at all. She knew something was bothering him. Whatever was on his mind, she guessed it might have something to do with his days overseas. There was no doubt that there were dark things that had happened there that she probably didn’t want to know about. Of course, he was probably also nervous about rejoining the civilized world and the start of his duty with the National Guard in a few days. She decided to wait until he was ready to talk about it.

She flipped the visor down and looked in the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes, confirming that she’d had precious little sleep for days due to last night’s uneasiness and the previous nights of marathon long sex. Her shoulder length blonde hair was stringy and in sore need of a shampoo. She couldn’t wait to get home to her apartment and wash all the funk off.

As Mark drove on, she reclined her seat and closed her eyes, feeling the sway of the truck as it rounded another curve. She fingered the diamond engagement ring on her hand, twisting it back and forth, as she imagined that the gentle rocking motion of the car was the waltz of a cruise ship as it swayed on the waves, carrying them along on their Caribbean honeymoon. Next summer, maybe? They hadn’t set a date yet. Her daydreams soon turned to the dreams of her subconscious as she fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, the truck had stopped.

They were at a gas station in the foothills on the outskirts of Boulder. Mark wasn’t in the car, and she saw no one else around. The wind kicked a dust devil up a few yards away, and the orange, white, and blue plastic flags strung across the awning flapped back and forth.

She stepped out of the truck and stretched the stiffness out of her legs, then walked towards the building to try and find Mark and a restroom.

Inside, the counter and shop were vacant. She guessed that Mark was in the restroom, so she decided to go as well.

When she came out, Mark was filling a Styrofoam cup with coffee from a machine. His hand shook as he tried to hold it steady under the stream of brown liquid.

“Where’s the clerk?”

“Don’t know. The pump is working, so I filled up. You want mocha or French vanilla?”

“Mocha,” she said as she pulled on her bottom lip and watched him.

He poured her coffee, grabbed a couple of breakfast burritos from the cooler, then laid two twenties on the counter. “Let’s go.”

As they got back into the truck, she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

He kept driving with his eyes straight ahead then he reached for the radio and turned the volume up.

In that instant, she thought he was going to crank up the music and tune her out again. But, it wasn’t music—it was a newscast.

The female announcer had a high-pitched warble in her voice. “…flu-like symptoms. Starts with a fever, then nausea and vomiting. Muscle aches and chills…”

“There’s some kind of epidemic going on. Apparently, it spread pretty fast over the weekend.”

“…some may experience unnatural cravings for spoiled food…”

“Spoiled food?” Cheryl grimaced. “What kind of—”

“Shhh…”

“…strange facial distortions and rotting flesh…”

She listened to the rest of the story.

When it was over and a commercial came on, Mark turned the volume down, then turned his eyes back towards the road.

“That can’t be for real. It’s ridiculous. Who gets sick and wants to eat anything, much less spoiled crap? I can’t believe—”

He turned the volume back up and flipped to a newscast on another station.

“…hospitals are beginning to feel the strain as more and more of the sick overwhelm their doors…”

“It sounds real to me.”

“What if it’s a hoax? Some kind of War of the Worlds thing?”

“What if it’s not?”

Cheryl wasn’t buying in to his concern. Even if there was some new epidemic, she didn’t believe that it could be that serious. Every other flu or virus scare in the past seemed to just be blown out of proportion by the media and never turned out to be anything significant. She wondered if Mark was just focusing on the radio news as a way to get out of talking about what was really on his mind.

“Maybe you should call in sick today.”

“Call in sick? I can’t. Not after a four-day weekend. That wouldn’t look very good to my boss. I already took a vacation day last Thursday, so we could have this long weekend together.”

“Well, just go to work then. Maybe your boss will close up early and send everyone home.”

“I doubt it. Schrumer’s got his feathers ruffled about some new regulations that might cost us some big bucks. He scheduled a meeting with all the agents today.”

Mark glanced over at her, long enough to make her uncomfortable as they approached a curve.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Watch the road!”

He faced his eyes forward again then began tapping his fingers on the steering wheel like he was keeping up with the beat of some music in his head…or counting something.

“Look, I’ll go in. If there’s really something serious going on, I’m sure I’ll be leaving in short order.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a thousand miles away. “You’re right.”

Suddenly, she had a horrible premonition that the reunion with Mark was really a farewell. Was he trying to spend as much time with her as possible before breaking off their engagement and revealing that he’d met some woman in the military that he was leaving her for? She tried to reassure herself that there was no evidence for that. His letters and phone calls for the last year had been frequent and loving. She should be more positive…think about their future together. But, a nagging little voice in her head reminded her, worst case scenarios do happen.

When they reached her apartment, he remained stolid and told her to go ahead and get ready for work while he started unpacking.

After she got in the shower, the warm water coursing over her felt so good, it was like a rebirth to her weary and filthy body. She closed her eyes and let it stream over her face, taking longer then she knew she should.

When she opened them, she was startled by a dark figure right next to the shower door.

The door slid open, and a naked Mark stepped inside. He wasted no time nestling into her neck from behind. “You really could stay home today…”

She turned to face him and put her arms around his neck, feeling a surge of optimism. “Yeah? If I did, I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

He pulled her closer. “You’re probably right.”

“Do you know the kind of crap I’d get from some of the jerk-offs in the office if I came back with a limp?”

He laughed. Then, he slid his hands down her back, coating it with the slippery suds of coconut body wash.

Chapter Two

Cheryl’s drive to work was horrendous. Impatient drivers cut her off, horns honked, and she saw at least three people run red lights. She wondered if it was the full moon causing the erratic behavior.

She turned on the radio, but after finding two stations in the middle of commercials and another yakking about a political battle, she turned it off, figuring that she’d better keep her mind focused on the idiots on the road anyway.

When she got to her work parking lot, she was elated to find a spot in the front row. After parking, she quickly grabbed her purse and briefcase and locked the door with her key fob as she walked towards the agency.

But, her gait slowed as she saw a man hunched over, sitting on the curb. He wore a long black basketball jersey and jeans, spiffed up by an array of gold chains around his neck. He was mumbling something to himself and rocking back and forth.

Seeing the bling, she ruled out homeless. She worried that he might be a purse snatcher with some dramatic ruse to approach her or an addict withdrawing from some sort of drug. She began a wide arc around him to get up to the sidewalk.

He kept rocking as she passed.

Relieved, she kept walking and—

He ran up and grabbed her sleeve from behind.

“Hey!” she shouted.

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, so red that she could hardly see any white around the hazel centers. His lower lids sagged down, revealing moist sallow flesh underneath, and there were flakes of flesh peeling away from his pink skin underneath the black stubble on his cheeks. He didn’t say anything—he just looked at her with a cocked head in some sort of silent desperation. Then, his nose wrinkled, and he sniffed her like a dog checking out a stranger.

“Get away from me!” She yanked her arm away and ran the last few feet for the door.

Once inside, she whipped around and looked back through the glass door. He hadn’t followed. He was just standing there, now slightly bent over and crooked, staring at her with his mouth hung open, as if he was just as surprised as she was at the encounter.

As she turned around towards the lobby, she said, “Did you see…”

But, no one was at any of the desks.

She had a second of elation. Maybe, Schrumer let everyone have the day off —

But, Schrumer popped out of his office before her wishful thinking got any further.

“Oh, Cheryl. Good. I’m glad you’re here. Half the office called in sick today. I know there’s some bug going around, but I can’t believe they’ve all got it. They’re either all hypochondriacs or just paranoid.” He threw his hands up in the air, sloshing coffee out of his mug. “I’ve got a goddamn business to run here. We need to meet today to talk about those new regulations…”

She nodded as he followed her towards her office. “Yes, I know.” Before she turned the corner in the hall, she glanced back over his shoulder towards the front window. The man outside was gone.

“Bob’s here, but I’m waiting for Lanny and Paul to get their tails in here. They’re both running late, and neither of them has called.”

“So, who’s here?”

“Just you, me, John, Mary, and Robert.”

Good, she thought. The water cooler gossips were out. Maybe, she’d actually get some work done.

“Meeting starts at 10:00 sharp. I want to get a plan going today. That Lanny better get his tail in here and Paul…”

Cheryl laughed and shook her head as he walked off still talking to himself.

Before she had her things put away and her computer warmed up, the phone on her desk rang. She didn’t answer it. There was way too much prep to do for the meeting to risk getting into a new claim with a client. Looking at the flashing red light on the voicemail button, she already had a feeling that this was going to be one backed up busy day. She imagined there were a half dozen messages waiting to tell her about fender benders and roofs that caught on fire from stray bottle rockets.

As she got to work, it seemed like only twenty minutes had passed when Schrumer buzzed her for the meeting, though, two hours had actually passed.

She sighed as she grabbed a stack of folders, a clean legal pad, and her pen and made her way towards the conference room.

Lanny brushed past her on the way. “Stinkin’ traffic! Took me forever to get up here from the south side.”

Considering her own commute and his rush to get to the bathroom, she believed him.

Schrumer and Bob were already seated as she walked into the small room that barely fit the long board table and chairs. Lanny joined them a couple minutes later with a mouthful of apologies and a ranting unabridged traffic report.

Schrumer’s impatience was evident by the reddening of his face. “Where’s—”

Before he could finish, a shadow fell across the table. They all looked up and saw Paul leaning against the doorframe.

“Well…I’m glad you could join us, ” Schrumer said, holding his hand out in a mocking welcome gesture.

Paul didn’t seemed prepared to deliver one of his famous comebacks. As he stumbled towards the table, it was obvious to Cheryl that he wasn’t feeling well, even if Schrumer didn’t seem to notice. His face was red, and there were shiny beads of sweat on his forehead. He looked like he might lurch over, head first, at any moment.

“I…I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he took the nearest chair.

Schrumer stacked the papers in front of him and tapped them on the table to straighten them. “Alright, then. Let’s talk about the regulations. We’re going to lose a buttload of…”

Cheryl tried to focus on what he was saying, but Paul was sitting straight across from her, staring at her with glassy vacant eyes. His mouth hung open, and he took raspy  breaths through it as if he couldn’t breathe at all through his nose. She imagined a green cloud of germs emanating from his lungs and leaned back in her chair to increase the distance away from him. What was that she’d heard earlier on the radio about an epidemic? All she could remember was something about flu-like symptoms and—

“Cheryl!”

She snapped out of her ruminations and looked towards Schrumer on the right side of the table.

“Cheryl, what did you find out about the new flood plain zones? Weren’t you researching that?”

She looked down and fumbled through her folder. Where was that report?

“Well, while you’re trying to get it together, maybe Paul can tell us—”

Paul turned toward Schrumer and looked above his head as if seeing something strange hovering above it then he slumped over onto the table with a thud.

“Paul?” They all said in unison.

When he didn’t respond, Bob went over and leaned down near him. “Hey man, you alright?”

He didn’t move.

Bob grabbed his shoulder and gave it a shake. “Hey…”

Schrumer didn’t look concerned. He looked pissed. Sitting back, he folded his arms over his chest. “So much for my important meeting.”

When Bob couldn’t rouse Paul, Cheryl said, “We’d better call 911.”

No one moved for a couple of seconds as if they were wondering if Paul was just playing some sort of practical joke. There was plenty of history for that. He’d once put a frog in Schrumer’s desk and tied all the toilet seats in the ladies restroom in the upright position. His pranks had all the aplomb of a pimple-faced Boy Scout who’d never matured any further past puberty. But, this was obviously not any sort of joke.

She’d expected someone closer to the door to rush to a phone, but everyone was still frozen. “Bob? Call…now…please.”

Bob sprinted out the door.

Lanny cocked his head sideways and studied Paul’s still form. “What…if he needs CPR?”

Schrumer huffed. “I’m not touching him.”

“Me neither,” Lanny said. Then, he turned and looked at Cheryl. “You took a class once, didn’t you?”

Shit.

Yeah. She did. It was a prerequisite for a part-time job she had helping out at a nearby preschool before she landed the insurance gig.

With lead-filled feet, she got up and inched around the table towards Paul. What was wrong with him? What if he was contagious? She stopped a foot away, not wanting to get any closer without donning a biohazard suit.

“What are you going to do?” Schrumer demanded.

“I don’t know. Just check him, I guess.”

She went closer and peered at him, able to see just the tip of his nose and purplish lips underneath a lock of black hair. She touched his hand, expecting it to be raging hot from a fever. But, it was cold…as cold as an ice cube. She put two fingers on the underside of his wrist and found no pulse. Did that mean…

Bob rushed back. “I can’t get through.”

Cheryl tensed. “What do you mean? The line is busy?”

“No. It just rings and rings. No one answers.”

Schrumer shook his head. “Government budget cuts. They oughta—”

Cheryl was about to tell him to keep trying, when she heard Paul moan.

Oh, thank God.

She reached for his hand again. “Paul…”

Still cold. He moaned again, but his body remained still.

Mary, Schrumer’s secretary, popped in. “What’s going on in here?”

“It’s Paul. Call 911. Stay on the line until someone answers. He needs an ambulance.”

She rushed off, and Cheryl tried to rouse Paul again. “Hey…how are you—”

Paul slowly raised his head and made a sound like a grunt. From behind, she couldn’t see his face, but Schrumer and Lanny could. They stared at him with gaping mouths.

“Paul…” she said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

His head panned around towards her.

She gasped and took a step backwards.

His eyes had rolled up into his head, leaving behind nothing but an eerie solid milky white. He was frozen like that for a second, then the eyes slid back down. The blue irises and pupils were cloudy. They looked at her but seemed to see nothing. It was the gaze of a sleepwalker, viewing some dreamlike inner world instead of their surroundings.

Paul’s eyes were so disturbing—Cheryl took another step back, tripped, and twisted her ankle before regaining her balance.

His skin was extraordinarily pale, not the normal tanned hue of a weekend tennis player. Red blotches began to bloom on his face and hands. They quickly rose into welts that looked angry and ready to burst.

Bob whispered, “It’s an allergic reaction, isn’t it? He told me once that he was allergic to nuts.”

Cheryl didn’t think so. Paul’s appearance was too strange for a common reaction to something like a peanut or a bee sting. She shook her head and said, “Check on Mary. See if she’s gotten through. If not, we may have to drive him to the hospital.”

Paul reached up with one hand and grabbed at his tie, pulling it tight like a noose as he tried to yank it off. The futile effort roused sympathy from Lanny.

“It’s alright buddy…we’re getting you some help. You want us to take that off for you?” Lanny rose from his chair and took a step towards Paul then stopped.

They all looked on in horror as Paul’s face began to look asymmetrical with his right eye arching up higher than the left. His gums seemed to recede before their eyes, making his teeth look long and sharp. Then, he snarled and began raking the table with his fingers.

Schrumer remained oddly calm. “Paul, if you aren’t feeling well, perhaps you should go to the hospital. Someone could take you—”

Paul made a grunting sound then jumped up, knocking his chair over and lunged towards Schrumer.

Schrumer yelped, holding his hands up in front of his face to protect himself. But, the assault never came. Instead of attacking, Paul ran past him to the trashcan in the corner of the office. He dumped it out and fell to his knees then began rummaging through the wadded up papers and pieces of cardboard until he found a dried half uneaten hamburger that looked several days old. Using both hands, he stuffed into his mouth, gorging on it like a starving animal.

They were all too dumbstruck at this sudden Mr. Hyde-like transformation to react. Watching this monstrous behavior, Cheryl wondered how Paul Dominski had gone from a perfectly normal jerk-off type of human being to something that looked like it had just stepped off the screen at a half price movie theater on Halloween night. Was he just sick? Was he on drugs? Had he lost his mind?

When Paul finished the petrified burger, he rose and came back towards Schrumer. He began sniffing him up and down. Schrumer cringed, folding down into his body as he tried to shoo him away with one hand and clutched his chest with the other. Panting, he looked up with a beet red face, and seemed unable to speak.

It took the potential heart attack scenario (and probably the potential of losing their jobs) to light a fire under Bob and Lanny. They rushed over and tried to pull Paul off of him. Paul bared his teeth, growling like a rabid animal as he flailed his arms and tried to fend them off. The struggle ensued for a few more seconds, but eventually the men were able to secure his arms and manhandle him out the door like a couple of bouncers.

As they fought to get him into the restroom and barricade the door, Cheryl approached Schrumer, now fully prepared to perform CPR if she needed. But, Schrumer clasped his hands them in front of him, bounced his chin off them, and began to take deep breaths.

“What the hell was wrong with him, Cheryl?”

“I don’t know,” she said as she shook her head. She’d seen some sick people in her day—her mother dying of pneumonia, her niece on death’s door from the flu—but she’d never seen anyone collapse, seemingly die, then go nuts like this. What was it she’d heard on the news? Something about an epidemic? Did Paul have it? Was he contagious? Were they all exposed now?

She sat down next to Schrumer and patted his hands. “Are you alright? We thought you were—”

“Having a heart attack?”

She nodded.

“No Just an anxiety attack, I’m afraid. Picked the wrong morning to forget my little blue pill.”

“I didn’t know—”

He shook his head as he patted down the pockets in his tan sports jacket. “Nothing you need to know about, my dear. We’ve all got something…” He found the bottle and dispensed a little blue oval. “I’m going to get some water. Why don’t we break for lunch until the ambulance or the police or whoever comes to take away that lunatic?”

She agreed. Thanks to her busy morning, she hadn’t had anything more than a cup of coffee, and the butterflies in her stomach had calmed enough now to reveal the rumbling.

She stopped by Mary’s office and saw her cradling the phone on her shoulder.

“Nothing. It’s the weirdest thing. It just rings and rings. Nobody answers.”

“We should go online. See what’s going on. I heard there was some flu-like epidemic—lots of people getting sick. Maybe they’re overwhelmed with calls.”

Mary shrugged. “I’m thinking of leaving and getting my kid from school. If there’s something bad going around, he should be home.”

Cheryl asked her to stay on the phone for just a few more minutes to try and get through. When she turned to leave, Paul stood in the hallway blocking her path. His hands stretched across to each wall, and he leaned forward, leering at her.

Lanny rushed up behind him. “We couldn’t hold him. He forced his way out.”

She glanced from them back to Paul.

Paul? Was that really him?

As he snarled at her, she saw that his face had changed even more dramatically. His skin had turned gray, and it looked like he’d been tearing at it with his fingers. The flesh was peeling away underneath his eyes, and underneath the flaps of skin and blood, she saw the white of bone.

This wasn’t Paul anymore. It was something else.

He rushed towards her, and she held her hands up in front of her face and screamed. But, instead of attacking, he ran past her…and out the front door.

They watched as he continued across the street, nearly getting hit by a passing utility truck then disappeared in the dense stand of trees at the edge of the park.

Bob walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Well…I guess we can tell Mary that the patient has left the building. You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think so. Just a little startled.”

Lanny hiked up his slacks. “Let’s get some grub. All this drama has made me hungry.”

And that’s that, she thought. No one’s too worried about Paul…about what just happened…what might be going on in the world. They just needed a Philly cheese steak sandwich and a beer and all would be well. Maybe they thought that Paul had always been just one notch short of going postal anyway, and his illness had just tipped the scale.

She waved them off. “Yeah, me too.”

She was relieved when they left and didn’t ask her to join them. There was too much adrenaline still coursing through her veins for her to concentrate on playing bullshit volleyball with them or joining in with the whining about sales figures and quotas.

Normally, she brown-bagged it, but she hadn’t had time to pack anything for her lunch this morning, so she decided to run out for a sandwich. There was a place two blocks away that had hedonistic six-inch calorie bombs that would fill her stomach with enough carbs and fat to put her in a blissful semi-coma for the rest of the afternoon.

She grabbed her purse and walked out the door.

Chapter 3

It had been a little overcast this morning, but it was sunny now. As she walked along the warm sidewalk, Paul’s sudden illness seemed a little less disturbing. He’d always been a bit of a pest, annoying her by stalling her client’s claims to get his processed faster, and he frequently talked to her cleavage instead of her face. She hoped that he had a long recovery period in a hospital before he came back—if he came back. She couldn’t think of anything that would cause that bizarre of behavior, unless it was a brain tumor or some rare tropical disease. But, that didn’t explain the rotting peeling flesh, and the fact that at least for a few minutes, he’d appeared to be completely dead.

She paused in front of the building, looking for any signs of Paul or the strange man that had approached her earlier, but saw neither. Thinking that she’d call Mark and tell him about her interesting day, she flipped up the side flap on her purse and reached for her cell phone. The battery symbol on front was black. After being on for the entire camping trip, it had a nearly dead battery. She walked to her car and hooked it up to the charger, figuring that she’d call Mark from her desk when she got back.

Before she shut the car door, she heard it ring. She leaned back in and looked at the incoming number. It was Mark.

She sat in the driver’s seat and answered. “Hi...”

“The Guard called. They want me to come in this afternoon.”

“That sucks. So much for a little more R & R before—”

“I’m not going.”

“What? You have to—”

“Come home.”

“I can’t. I’m working. I—”

“Come home, now.”

“Mark. What’s—”

“This is big, Cheryl. It’s not just some little flu going around. I think we need to get prepared for the worst.”

“Fine. We’ll talk about it when I get home tonight. Right now, I’m starving, and I can’t even think straight. You would not believe what just happened here. Remember that guy, Paul I told you about the other day?”

There was silence on the other end.

“Mark?”

Nothing.

“Hey…if you can hear me…I’ve got to go. Schrumer just gave us a break before our meeting resumes.”

She looked at the phone. It was dead. She’d lost him.

She set it down and looked at her watch then got out of the car. She figured she had just about forty-five minutes, before Schrumer returned to his normal ‘Type A’ personality and got back down to business, expecting everyone to return to the conference room and pretend like it was a normal day.

As she walked back towards the sidewalk on her way to the row of shops that lined the street, she heard shouting in the park. Through the line of pine trees, she saw two police officers struggling to get cuffs on a man lying on the ground. A third one held a gun to the man’s head.

The man was shirtless, wearing cutoff jean shorts and no shoes. His hair was a mass of wild dark curls that bounced around like springs as he resisted the arrest. Even from this distance she could tell that his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin had the same gray pallor like Paul. His mouth kept opening and closing like he was trying to say something, but just couldn’t get the words out. She wondered why they were treating a sick person like a criminal. Shouldn’t they be strapping him on a gurney to get him to the hospital, instead of trying to haul him off to jail?

Sympathy was not forthcoming as the officer with the gun put his boot on the man’s head to try and keep him still. But, he continued to squirm and writhe, hindering the other officers from keeping his wrists together long enough to clamp on the second cuff.

Despite having his head wedged onto the ground, the man’s mouth kept moving like he was trying to gulp mouthfuls of grass. He stretched his chin out towards a small brown lump nearby, snapping his teeth. Then she noticed a scattering of feathers a few inches away. He wasn’t trying to speak or eat grass—he was after the brown lump. It was the carcass of a bird—a headless sparrow.

Tearing herself away from the odd scene and moving forward, she gave up on trying to understand anything today. She had been so transfixed on the commotion that she almost forgot her mission—procure a sandwich to feed her stomach that was now feeling a bit disturbed instead of hungry. Even if she was feeling a little queasy at the moment, she figured that she ought to pick up lunch anyway, because she was feeling light-headed from low blood sugar. She could always save it for later…

But, food did not seem forthcoming. At the end of the block, she found herself stalled at a crowd of people blocking the sidewalk. Somewhere ahead of them, there was the flash of blue and red lights from a police car. She figured it had something to do with the man in the park.

She walked up to a man with a bicycle, wearing a sporty spandex riding outfit and a long plastic tube on a shoulder strap, who stood near the rear of the group.

“What’s going on?”

“Beats me. I’m trying to make a delivery. There’s a police barricade or something, and I don’t have time for this…”

I don’t have time for this either.

She decided to shove her way through. Maybe once she was past the crowd, she could skirt around whatever was causing the hold up. “Excuse me…” she said as she tried to use her elbows to gently nudge a path. The people were crammed together tightly, not giving up their position willingly as if they were in line for some big event. But, she managed to angle her torso and clutch her purse close to make herself thin like a needle and pierce her way through.

Nearing daylight at the front, she hesitated as her shoes stepped into something sticky. Each heel clung to the cement like a suction cup, and she had to pull them off with force. She tried to look down to see what sort of muck she’d stepped into, but the close bodies and resulting shadows on the ground prevented her from getting a look.

It took a few more pushes to burst through the edge of the crowd. When she popped out into the clearing, she stopped as quickly as if she’d slammed into a brick wall.

Oh my God…

The scene in front of her was pure carnage.

There were a half dozen bodies splayed out on the sidewalk. They’d been shot in the head. Blood, brain tissue, and other detritus were splattered around them. Two paramedics were busy unloading body bags from the back of an ambulance.

She looked down and realized that, for the last few feet, she’d been walking in the blood of the nearest victim.

What had happened? Had someone gone crazy and started shooting pedestrians? Out of morbid curiosity and the sheer will to know what had terrible thing had occurred, she forced herself to look up again at the bodies.

The dead included three men, a woman, and a couple of teenaged boys. All of them had skin with that unnatural gray hue. It was the disease, wasn’t it? But, why had they been shot?

She turned to her right to ask the person next to her. He was an older man with wisps of white hair, a normal looking fellow with a navy t-shirt, khaki shorts, and white socks underneath his leather sandals. He held a black plastic garbage sack with one hand, reaching into it with the other, and sticking handfuls of something green and slimy into his mouth that looked like seaweed…or rotten vegetation.

She felt sick. How could someone look at the horrific scene in front of them and eat? She felt faint, and her legs wobbled for a second on her heels.

“Cheryl…”

Hearing her name, she turned around and looked behind her but only saw the mass of people. Maybe the voice was in her head—her subconscious speaking to her as she was about to pass out.

“Cheryl!”

It sounded like Mark. But, how was that possible? She’d just been on the phone with him a few minutes ago. She stood, rooted to the spot, unsure if it was her imagination.

A second later, a hand grabbed her shoulder. She turned around. It was Mark.

He was dressed in his khaki fatigues and tan combat boots with his rifle slung over his shoulder inside its nylon case, hardly disguised as something as benign as a golf club or a guitar.

“What are you doing here?” She managed to ask before covering her mouth to hold back the urge to retch.

His eyes were big wide saucers, icy blue crystals that seemed frozen with fear. She’d never seen that look on him before, and it made her even more scared.

He clamped onto her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here now.”

She looked at the crowd behind him. It seemed even larger now. People were shoving and pressing them forward. Another inch, and she’d topple over the yellow police tape. Were they all just rubbernecking, trying to see this massacre?

She assumed he had seen the news. “What happened here?”

“There’s no time,” he shouted as a peal of screams rang out behind them. “We gotta go!”

“What? Go where? Why?”

He pointed to the right…towards the park.

The sun was bright. She squinted and looked that way, seeing nothing unusual at first. There was a row of pine trees dotted by the occasional big spruce. Beyond them, she could see the circle of park benches with the red, yellow, and blue metal playground in the center. Bees buzzed around a bed of brightly colored zinnias near the parking meters.

She glanced back to Mark, then back to the park. “I don’t—”

The line of trees moved.

She cupped her hand over her eyes and stared. It wasn’t trees, it was a long line of people, just standing there. Their skin had the pallor of mushrooms, and their mouths moved up and down like the guy she’d seen being arrested. One down on the far right looked like Paul…

She flinched as a barrage of gunshots rang out, and a few from the line buckled and fell.

“Come on!” Mark said as he shoved her down and under the yellow tape.

She stumbled, dropping a knee hard onto the blood-spattered concrete. Mark picked her up and grabbed her arm, urging her on. His fingernails sliced into her as he forced her over the top of a corpse then pushed her towards the nearest business, a dry cleaner shop.

When they reached the door, he tried the handle, but found it was locked. The staff inside just stood there, staring out at them.

They went on to the next door. It was a nail salon, and a petite Asian woman stared out at them from the other side of the glass. She shook her head as Mark tried the door. When she wouldn’t open it, he pounded on it with his fist.

By now, the crowd behind them had crashed through the yellow tape and was on their heels. People pounded on the doors and windows, and she heard the shattering of glass.

Amidst the chaos, a black and white police car cruised down the street, flashing its red and blue lights. A speaker mounted on the top blared a message. “All civilians are instructed to seek shelter now. Go inside the nearest building and lock the doors. I repeat—All civilians are…”

They kept going, but the next two businesses—a liquor store and a pizza place—were locked too.

At the next door, a man in a red shirt and matching cap, with a handlebar mustache, was about to lock it. Mark slammed through the door, knocking him down. He pulled her inside with him then turned around to lock the door. His hand was almost there when a woman appeared on the other side with a young girl beside her. Their terrified eyes begged…

Marks looked up and down the street at the frantic crowd, then he opened the door and pulled them in.

“Oh Jesus. Thank you…” the woman said as she picked the girl up in her arms.

When the door was locked behind them, he closed the blinds on the door and the large windows on either side.

Then, he motioned for everyone to move back, away from the front of the building, as he un-shouldered his rifle and began to unzip the case.

Cheryl wrapped her arms around herself as she realized that her entire body was shaking. She took a quick glance back at the nearly two-dozen people sheltering with them inside Subs and Such, the sandwich shop that, just a few minutes ago, she’d been aiming for to get a quick bite to eat. Somehow, she knew that lunch wasn’t going to be on the menu today, and there wasn’t going to be a meeting about insurance regulations…not today…maybe not ever.

Chapter 4

“You the manager?” Mark said to the man in the red cap as he lined up boxes of shells on the nearest table.

The man stood mute for a moment, then nodded, with his mouth turned into an upside down ‘u’ shape, parallel to his shaggy mustache.

“Go kill the lights.”

“What?”

“Turn off the lights, now!”

When he didn’t move, Mark pointed the rifle at his head. “Soldier up, man. We don’t have time for—”

“Alright,” the man said, holding his hands up in the air. Chill out. I’m going…”

As he pushed through the group towards the counter, the young girl, a pretty thing with ponytails made of spun gold, began to cry. Her mother held her tighter and said, “Put the gun down…please. You’re scaring everyone.”

Cheryl watched Mark’s face power down from a rigid mask forged from adrenaline to a softer look of exhaustion and sadness. His bottom lip quivered as he re-shouldered his gun.

A man in casual business clothes, old enough to be her father, stepped forward as the lights went out. “What’s going on out there?”

Mark whispered in the darkness, “Haven’t you been listening to the news?”

“No. I’m afraid I haven’t. I make a point not to…”

“The epidemic. It’s been spreading fast. Exponentially. There’s so many sick now, there’s no room for them in the hospitals. They’re wandering the streets and—

“And what?” Cheryl asked as she thought about Paul’s absurd symptoms. “Fishing rancid burgers out of the trash?” Despite Paul’s weird and rapid decline, she didn’t know if it was related to the epidemic and didn’t understand the panic. On her way to work that morning, she’d seen a few people meandering about on the sides of the roads with their heads hung low and in no particular hurry to get anywhere, but it was hard to tell if they were sick or just one of the many homeless that normally roamed the area. She wondered why the police had arrested the man in the park…why the massacre occurred outside. Had authorities just gone nuts…shooting sick people? “I don’t get what the—”

“Ssshh…” Mark said.

She hadn’t realized that her voice had gone up a few decibels, squeaking out her confusion.

“Keep your voice down…all of you…and stay away from the door and the windows.”

The group had been mumbling amongst themselves. Some were chatting on cell phones, but stopped for a moment to hear what Mark had to say. The young girl’s cries turned to whimpers as the mother spoke softly in her ear.

“The sick people aren’t just gorging on rotten food…”

“Rotten food?” Someone repeated from the back of the room.

“They’re attacking people...eating human flesh.”

There were gasps.

A woman nearby asked, “You’re saying they’re turning into cannibals?

“Something like that.”

“Bullshit,” came a gruff voice a few feet away. “Sounds like some socialist scare tactic to enact martial law.”

Cheryl could feel Mark’s body stiffen.

“Really? Take a peek through the blinds and tell me how the government takeover’s going.”

“Hmmph,” the man said. Then, he fumbled past them.

A sliver of light appeared through the blinds on the right window as he looked out. They could only see the shape of his silhouette as he stood motionless and viewed the scene outside.

With the room hushed, Cheryl realized there were screams and gunshots in the distance and very close by. It sounded like pandemonium out there.

“Dear God…” the man said as he closed the blinds.

“You want to share what you saw with the group?”

The man shuffled past them to his previous spot and didn’t speak.

“Anyone else?” Mark asked.

Three people moved forward and went to the window. There were gasps and murmurs as they looked out.

“I don’t want everyone at the window. It’s better to stay back—stay quiet. You can come look…a couple at a time…if you want. Those who look…tell the others what you saw.”

A curt voice with a northeastern accent spoke up a few feet away. “Who voted you king?”

Mark raised his volume. “Who said that? You go look out there and tell me if you want to take over the crown.”

The man piped down. Cheryl didn’t know if he was one of the people nudging past them towards the front. She wrapped her arms around Mark, avoiding the cold steel of the gun at his side.

“You’re shaking,” he said as he pulled her closer.

“I want to see.”

“No you don’t, babe.”

“I…I need to know what’s going on.”

He sighed. “I never wanted you to experience anything like this. This is war. It’s going to be a battle for our lives.”

“War?”

Cheryl recognized the gruff-sounding voice from before. “Are you saying it’s some sort of biological warfare? Terrorist attack?”

“No. It’s not that.”

A lady nearby said, “What are we going to do? I’ve got kids at home. I’ve got to get back—”

Someone from behind answered, “You ain’t going nowhere lady. None of us are. Not right now.”

Mark didn’t have a much more reassuring response. “I don’t know. Wait until it calms down out there…probably try to find a shelter or something.”

Cheryl saw an opening at the window and pulled away from Mark.

“Cheryl…don’t…”

“I have to know…”

But, with every step forward, a voice in her head said, “I don’t want to know… I don’t want—”

She reached the window and parted the blinds, opening them a half an inch, just enough to see out. What she saw was the stuff of nightmares.

This can’t be happening. This sort of stuff only happens in the movies…

The scene on the street was horrifying beyond belief. People ran in every direction, screaming, trying to get away from the hoards of jaw-snapping attackers with peeling flaps of ashen skin and torn, blood-soaked clothing.  It was like the gates of hell had been opened, and the dead, in all stages of decomposition had been released and allowed to roam freely…and sate their thirst for blood and flesh. Somehow, this bizarre virus had turned people into cannibals.

The afflicted moved slowly, but steadily towards their victims. She could tell that many were able to outrun them and get away, but anyone cornered or surrounded…was doomed.

After seeing the general picture of the horrors going on, her focus turned to the sidewalk just outside the sandwich shop. A steel trashcan that had been wired to a light pole had been pried away and knocked over. An elderly man sat next to it, frantically searching through the mountain of rubbish. On any other day, she’d have thought that he was searching for a lost ring or a dropped cell phone. But, after a couple of seconds, he’d found his prize—it was an apple core, brown and shriveled. He put the whole thing in his mouth, stem and all…then began searching for more treasure.

Amidst the cacophony of screams, the sound of a child wailing nearby drew her attention away. She found the source…it was a young boy, standing on the sidewalk crying. He wore blue and red Thomas the Train pajamas, and had his little hands balled into fists. Tears streamed down his face in rivers.

I have to help them. I have to…

But, before she could get a signal from her mind down to her feet, a shadow loomed over the boy. It was a young woman in hip clothing—skinny jeans, a rock t-shirt, and black and white checkered high tops. Her honey-colored hair had streaks of pink in it. She picked the boy up, slung him over her hip and ran off.

Was that the boy’s—

A face smacked up against the glass, its mouth formed in the perfect oval of EdvardMunch’s painting, The Scream.

Cheryl jumped back, away from the window. The blind slats stayed bent, and she could see the unblinking glassy eyes staring straight at her. Blood-covered teeth snapped up and down like a wood nutcracker.

Mark ran up and pushed the blinds closed. “That’s it. Everyone get back. We don’t want to draw any attention to this place.”

“Do ya mind, hon?”

Cheryl whipped around towards the sound of the throaty voice in her ear and realized that she was standing on the shoes of a woman behind her. She stepped off the tips of the woman’s shiny wine-colored pumps. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. You know…I own the nail salon next door. I just came in here for a goddamn sandwich, not knowing that the world was about to go freakin’ nuts. Now, I’m stuck with this lot of losers.” She fished a slim cigarette out of her purse and lit it with a silver lighter.

The flame created a brief golden glow over the woman’s face, a road map of fine lines. The vertical crevices of dark red lipstick around her mouth deepened as she took a quick drag. “I don’t know if I’d rather spend my last hours with the gaggle of hens over there or with the motley crew here, but I sure as hell don’t need some pigeon-toed pixie stomping all over me.”

Cheryl’s already tense body stiffened like the laces of a steel corset had been violently tightened. As a young girl, she’d been pegged as a shy, polite type. There was still much of that in her today—the introverted girl who’d rather bow her head and back off than risk an escalating conflict. But, the adrenaline was raging in her body. And—after what she’d just seen outside the window—rules of etiquette were probably not the biggest concern anymore. She really wanted to slap this woman…maybe give her a good one-two punch—not the shadow type that she’d learned from kickboxing class at the gym—a serious bone-cracking hit.

Her hands balled into fists and her teeth clenched. “I said I was sorry.”

The woman tossed her head back, took a long condescending drag then blew smoke in Cheryl’s face.

Before she could react, someone yelled, “Hey lady…put the cancer stick out.”

A chorus of voices followed. “Yeah…”

Cheryl felt empowered with the crowd behind her. “You heard them…”

“Piss off!”

Cheryl’s hand shot up and knocked the cigarette to the ground. The next thing she knew…the woman’s bony hands were around her throat, and she was falling hard on the tile floor.

“Hey! Get offa her!”

It was Mark. He pulled the woman off and sent her flying into a group of chairs. The sound was like a bowling ball hitting a strike.

Cheryl tried to sit up and breathe, but found herself gasping for air.

“Are you alright?” Mark asked along with the chorus of the concerned group hunching over her.

It was another minute before she could speak. “I…think so,” she said as her chest heaved in painful gulps of air, and she considered that it might not have been a good idea to stand up to a cranky pit bull wearing lipstick.

Once she could breathe again, Mark helped her to her feet. She glanced nervously around, worried that the woman might come back again to retaliate. But, the store was so dark, she couldn’t see more than an arm’s length away. She hobbled as he guided her over to a booth and told her to sit then sat down next to her.

As she melded into the cool plastic and leaned her head on the brick wall, her voice came out in a raspy whisper. “What’s wrong with those people out there?”

Mark leaned in closer and whispered back. “They’re sick.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone sick like that. They’re eating garbage…and people. They’re eating people!”

“Keep it down. Everyone in here is already on edge.”

“Of course they are. I’m on edge, too! What’s happening? You knew. Somehow, you knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? You were so quiet when we heard the news on the radio this morning.”

He was silent for a moment then he wrapped his arms around her, hugged her, and kissed her on the cheek. She could feel wetness coming from his eyes.

“There wasn’t a bear outside the tent last night—you were erasing footsteps in the dirt this morning, weren’t you?”

She felt his head nod on her shoulder.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t…I was worried they were here.”

“Who was here?”

“The Eaters. I didn’t know then…I just—”

“Know what?”

Mark took a deep breath then began pouring a strange story out to her. “I think it started with the dogs. We got these shepherds at the base near Kabul. They’d been trained to sniff out bombs. They brought them to us to do some more work with them, because they’d started acting strange…avoiding their food…and going for the slop in the garbage cans instead. We’d only had them for a few days when they got really sick and started attacking people. They just went crazy, like they had rabies or something. We had to shoot them—there was no other choice.

“Dogs? But—”

“It didn’t end there. One night after that, some of our regiment was attacked. We were asleep in our tents when we heard footsteps outside. Thinking it was Taliban, we started shooting, but the sick-looking bastards just kept coming. There were dozens of them, walking straight towards the gunfire. You couldn’t stop them—unless you aimed for the head. The attacks went on for days and some of my buddies were killed. But, the odd thing was, when one of them slipped past the guards into camp, they left most of us alone. They were usually just after the garbage…or the wounded. My buddy, Jeff, had shrapnel in his leg. They couldn’t get it all out, and it got gangrene. One night, an Eater came in…and ate his leg.”

Cheryl shuddered, knowing that it would be a long time before she got some of the gruesome images out of her head that she had seen and heard today. This was all so much to digest. She tried to wrap her mind around what Mark was telling her and make some sense out of all of it. “So you think whatever the dogs had…somehow it jumped species and spread to humans?”

“What else? There’s more…I found out later that those dogs weren’t normal to begin with. They’d started out in a lab…some genetic experiment. They’d originally been created to sniff out cancer.”

“Cancer?”

“Yeah. Think about it. Bred to search for something rotten…”

Cheryl thought again about Paul. He’d devoured that putrid burger like he was a starving animal, and it was a delicacy plucked from the Queen’s table. Just before that…he’d been so cold…he’d been dead. She knew it. There hadn’t been a pulse.

“…but what no one knows is how this disease, or whatever it is, transferred from the dogs to people. And, it seems to have mutated, turning people into these rotting eating machines.”

“Why weren’t they quarantined when it started?”

“It happened too fast. You probably heard on the news a few months ago that a whole village was bombed. They were all infected, wandering the streets, just eating, eating, eating…any rotten thing or creature they could get their mouths on. Whatever this virus was…we tried to contain it…keep it from spreading to the rest of the world. But…apparently we failed.”

She let that statement sink down to the pit of her stomach and was silent for a moment, taking in the hushed jumble of voices around her, and the backdrop of the shrieks outside. Then, she squeezed his hand, hoping for some kind of hope to come out of him next. “What are we going to do? We can’t stay here forever…”

“Well…we got food. We got water. I say we stay put for now. Try to find out what’s going on. Maybe someone will come restore order. The—”

“The Guard? You’re The Guard. And, you’re here with me instead of out there…”

“I had to find you. If I’d reported like they wanted me too…where would you be right now? Splattered all over the sidewalk out there?”

She winced. He was right. If he had gotten there even just a few seconds later, she would have been trampled by that crowd...then maybe eaten by one of the infected. She shuddered at the thought. There was no doubt that Mark had saved her life by going AWOL from his duty.

Suddenly, the darkness retreated as a fluorescent light popped on in the back of the store.

Mark jumped to his feet. “I thought I said no lights!”

All twenty plus people turned and looked at the silhouette of a person standing in the back hallway among the shelves of bread loaves and gallons of mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, and pickles—backlit by the rectangular glow of sunlight coming in from the open back door.

Mark grabbed his rifle and yelled, “There’s a back door! Nobody locked the damn back door!”

Chapter 5

The heavyset middle-aged woman had on a pink cotton nightgown with a matching terry cloth robe, and fuzzy slippers that had once been white.  Her graying hair was done up in tiny bristled curlers, and her entire front side, from her chin down to her feet, was mottled with dirt and blood. But the most disturbing thing was her gray peeling and welted skin, and her coal black vacant eyes. As she shuffled forward with slow, dragging steps, Cheryl thought she looked like a corpse that had been plucked from a bin at the city morgue and reanimated with batteries and cables.

The crowd in the store parted down the middle as Mark aimed and fired. The bullet hit her square in the chest, knocking her flat on her back.

“Mark!” Cheryl screamed. “How could you? She was sick! She was—”

“—already dead.”

But, was she? The woman’s upper body lifted straight up. Then she came to her knees. One hand was outstretched, the fingers curled up like claws, as she began crawling towards them.

Mark aimed again.

“No!” Cheryl grabbed at the barrel of the rifle just before he fired, knocking it a few inches off course.

Her right shoulder was blown away. She wobbled back and forth on her knees then fell face forward onto the floor.

“Why did you do that?” Mark asked, shaking the rifle at her like it was a club.

“She was an old woman. She looked like my grandmother…”

“I don’t care if it had been your grandmother. Don’t ever do that again!” He walked over to the woman’s body. It was quivering and jerking, flopping around like a fish in a frying pan. He put his boot on her back and fired a second time, straight into her head.

Cheryl screamed and buried her face in her hands as blood and other detritus splattered around the room. When she looked up, Mark was staring down at the still body as if he expected it to move again.

A man with blood-soaked cowboy boots standing near him shouted, “Hey!” His finger pointed towards the back door.

Another figure stood there—a young man wearing a yellow polo shirt with a logo from the pizza store next door. He snarled, baring a mouthful of teeth as Mark rushed towards him and slammed the door in his face. As he held his back to it, he yelled, “Where’s the manager? Somebody lock this door…now!”

The man with the MarioBrothers mustache rushed to the back. Mark held the door against kicks and pounds from the other side while he fumbled to get the key in the lock. When it was secured, they walked back towards the others.

Cheryl watched them, not enjoying seeing Mark in soldier mode…but thankful all the same.

The manager, with the nametag that said, Gary, asked Mark, “Why didn’t you shoot him too?”

“I don’t want to waste any bullets. I don’t know how long they need to last us.”

“I knew him. He was a good kid. I’m glad I didn’t have to see him die.”

“How many employees do you have here?”

“Two. Justin and Steve.”

“Tell them their new job duties include body removal. You got a cooler to put that in?” he asked, pointing to the woman’s sprawled body.

“Yeah…it’s—”

The fluorescent light that had come on from the motion sensor when the woman walked past, snapped off, throwing them back into darkness. The shop was suddenly quieter, minus the hum of the computers, refrigerator, and ovens. Then, with a whoosh, they all came back on.

“Generator?” Mark asked.

Gary nodded. “Yes.”

“How long can it run?”

“I dunno. A few hours? We’ve never needed it longer than that.”

“Does it keep the meat cold?”

Cheryl couldn’t really see it, but she knew the store’s assembly line included bins of sliced turkey, chicken, salami, bologna, and other cold cuts. It was hard to believe that she’d been starving for a Turkey Jack just a short time ago. Now, even though she hadn’t eaten since the marshmallows last night, the thought of food made her stomach turn.

“Yeah. Sure.” Gary snorted. “Why? You need to break for a sandwich?”

“No, smartass. I’m just concerned about the smell if it starts to go bad. There’s a lot of meat here to spoil if the power is off for too long.”

Mark came back over to her as Gary shouted to his crew to get some trash bags to use as a tarp to move the woman’s body and some rags to clean up the floor, so no one would slip in the blood. He started to guide her back to the booth where they’d been before, but stopped, and grabbed his cell phone out of a shirt pocket. She saw that there was no signal before he snapped it closed.

“Has anyone here gotten through to 911? To the police? To any authorities?”

There was a round of groans.

“I heard a lady in the corner talking on her phone to someone. Maybe she’s found out something.” She pointed him towards where she’d heard the voice then followed him over.

“Ma’am?” he said to the woman sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. “You able to get through to anyone?”

She was sobbing. It took a moment for her to stop and talk in a warbled voice. “My mother. She’s got my kids. They’re trapped in the house…”

Cheryl thought about her father, and the rest of her family, many miles away in Arizona. She could only hope that everything was all right in that part of the country. She leaned down and put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Has she heard anything on the news? What part of town is she in?”

“She’s on the east side. She hasn’t heard anything. There’s no t.v. There was radio until just now. Some DJ was holed up downtown, still broadcasting from a barricaded office, but he stopped talking about an hour ago.”

“What about a shelter?” Mark asked. “Have any shelters been set up?”

“For the sick?”

“No. For us…to protect—”

“I haven’t heard nothing.”

As the sobs came back, it was obvious that the interrogation was over. There was no more news forthcoming. Cheryl and Mark retreated back to the booth. They leaned on each other, trying to take a mental and emotional break, even though that wasn’t really possible.

After a moment, she said, “We should have let more people in. We could have saved—”

“No. We barely made it in here ourselves. You saw the other stores. They locked the doors. They were so scared…they weren’t letting anyone in. We were lucky to get in here.”

“Yes…but—” She paused and sat up. “Listen…it’s quieter outside.”

“You’re right. I’m going to go look.”

She followed him to the window.

It seemed like just a few minutes had passed since she was outside walking on her lunch break, but it had been a few hours. The shadows were long and thin on the sidewalk, giving it a zebra striped effect. And amongst the patterns of shimmering light and bands of purple shadow…there were bodies—lots of bodies. She couldn't believe that just a short time ago the motionless lumps had been people, walking, talking and going about their day.

“Look at all of them…” Cheryl watched, wide-eyed at the number of Eaters still roaming and shuffling about. They didn’t outnumber the dead, but there were a lot of them. She guessed there were dozens within her view that stretched from the shop to the park across the street, but given the wall of figures that she’d seen in the park just before they ran into the shop, there was probably an army of them out there.

“Yeah…not good. What we can see from here is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Mark,” she said as she pulled him away from the window, but kept him close, so she could cup a hand over his ear and whisper. “How do we know that some of the people in here aren’t infected. I mean…remember that guy at work…Paul—the jerk I told you about before? One minute, he looked a little ‘off’ then it was like he was dead…then like a lightning bolt…he went nuts. It happened so fast—if there’s a virus causing this—what’s the incubation period?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was always villagers that got it. None of my squad got sick. But, we were popping a lot of vitamins, smoking a lot of weed, even doing some herbal stuff like ginseng and ephedra to keep our energy and immune system up. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.”

So many questions…so few answers as to how this epidemic had spread so quickly and why some got sick and others didn’t.

The generator did not power the air conditioning. Cheryl realized that she was sweating. The heat made her tired. She fumbled her way across the room to get a bottle of water from the counter, then returned to her spot and leaned back in the booth as Mark started chatting with a man nearby.

As she sipped her water, she looked around the room. The light was even dimmer than before, but she could tell that there was a quite a diverse lot of people holed up with them. There were more men than women, but the split was close, probably sixty-forty. She saw the woman with the young girl that they’d let in earlier, laying in a booth with her daughter asleep in her arms, the store manager and his employees huddled together like a three-man football team, and an assortment of men and women, young and old, in business and casual dress. The one person she didn’t see was the obnoxious woman who’d been smoking earlier. Maybe, she was in the bathroom. With a mischievous grin, Cheryl figured they should consider locking her in there if she got out of hand again.

It would be easier to see the people better—inspect them—in brighter light. Then, they might have some warning if someone started to show signs of infection. If it happened, she hoped it wouldn’t be someone sitting close to her, and that Mark would be able to stop them before anyone got hurt.

She nodded off for a few minutes and when she woke, water was spilled on her lap and she could hear Mark in a heated conversation.

“How about you just listen to the man with the gun?”

Cheryl was appalled. Was this her Mark?

He wasn’t talking to the bald guy in the plaid golf shorts anymore; it was Gary, the manager.

“We don’t want any more trouble in here. Why don’t you just put the gun away,

Mark shook his head. “You don’t get it. This isn’t a movie. This is real. There’s a virus going around. Once it infects, it kills people, but they don’t exactly die—they just turn into rotten, flesh-eating monsters. If I hadn’t shot that woman, there might be several of us lying on the floor right now. I just saved your stinkin’ lives. A ‘thank you’ might be more appropriate.”

The argument halted as red and blue lights began strobing on the other side of the blinds.  The man closest to the window went over and looked out.

“Hey! There’s a police car out there…we gotta let him know we’re here…” Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed the cord, raised the blinds, and started waiving his arms and pounding on the window.

Now that she could see out, Cheryl could tell that he was wasting his time. The policeman, leaning out of his car door with a handgun, was young—probably a rookie in his first year. He began shooting randomly at Eaters like it was some crazed sport. Trying to get his attention was about as useless as waiving at a pilot in a jet 30,000 feet up in the air, because his mind—whatever might be left of it after so much trauma—was beyond reaching...and he was very focused on his futile task.

They all watched as the worst-case scenario eventually happened. The gun ran out of bullets, and the Eaters closed in on him. They scrambled over the top of his car, beating on the windows with their fists, the protruding bones of their arms or legs, even with the broken wood slats from park benches and large rocks—a terrifying sign that they truly weren’t all just ‘mindless zombies’—some of them still had some violent intelligence at work in their brains propelling them towards their goal.

When the windshield cracked and shattered, Cheryl looked away, and so did many of those around her.

“They’re like killer bees. Once you’ve got their attention, they don’t let off.”

The woman next to her who said it was about her same age—but instead of wearing a bloodied suit, she had on a sundress—a pretty white cotton one with embroidered daisies at the hem—that looked like it belonged on a picnic on a sunny afternoon in the park across the street instead of in a mess like this. She was still watching out the window intently, like she couldn’t pry her stunned eyes away.

There were others still watching too like rubbernecking drivers going past an accident—their eyes unable to tear away from the fleeting horrors. One said, “There’s one digging through the trash over there. I just saw one put a big slimy tomato slice in his mouth.”

“That’s nothing,” the lady in the sundress said as she pointed to the right. “There’s a group of them in the street. They’ve started eating the corpses.”

Cheryl winced and covered her mouth with one hand. “I could have gone my whole lifetime without hearing someone say a sentence like that.”

Someone from the back of the shop yelled, “Can you all nix the play by play? Some of us have had enough.”

As the dejected man who’d tried to flag the policeman for help lowered the blinds, Justin, the wiry shop employee with pock-marked cheeks, came up from the back and approached the lady in the sundress, as if he might find some strength in her courage. “Have any of them come near the door?”

She hesitated. “Yeah. Some old woman did. She tried the door, but when she realized it was locked, she just started mumbling and walked off.”

Cheryl shuddered. The back door of the shop was a steel door, and it was bolted shut. But the front of Subs & Such was all glass. It wouldn’t take more than a big rock or a steel pipe thrown at it to shatter it. So far, none of the Eaters had paid much attention to the sandwich shop. They seemed to have enough food to keep themselves sated with the garbage, live victims, and corpses outside. She hoped the people in the shop were able to stay quiet and keep their low profile for as long as possible.

That hopeful thought did not last for long.

A couple of hours later, a man claimed to have heard a news report on his phone. He said, “The power is out in many areas and some major roads are closed, but they’re saying that some people are venturing out, at least to try to get to one of the Red Cross shelters that are setting up.”

A gruff voice yelled, “That’s nuts, man! Didn’t you just see what happened out there? Ain’t nobody going nowhere.”

The man with the phone continued. “Well…they’re saying that it’s only a few of the sick ones that have started attacking people. They’re not all so violent, and it’s worse in some parts of town than others. They say…just don’t mess with them. Get out of their way if one comes near. Don’t threaten them. Don’t look them in the eye. If one growls or comes towards you, just slowly back away.”

There were scoffing laughs in the room.

“Like they’re dogs?” someone asked.

Another, more hopeful, said, “Great! Maybe we can get to our cars and try to get home.”

Mark held out his hand. “The hell you are—the hell anyone is—it’s not safe to step a foot outside that door.”

It was a man with a baseball cap and ratty t-shirt that said, “Got beer?” who spoke next. Earlier, Cheryl thought he had disgruntled postal worker written all over him when he’d simply introduced himself as ‘Ed’ without any other details. She’d guessed that he might be the first to freak out and do something stupid.

He hopped up off his perch on a table and said, “I don’t know about trying to drive anywhere just yet, but since you freaks in here won’t let anyone have a cigarette, I think I’ll take my chances and go puff out there with the deadheads. They won’t mind. And, while I’m at it, I think I’ll run next door to the liquor store and grab me a six-pack. Actually…maybe I’ll just bunk over there. They’re probably having a good party, compared to this morbid crowd.”

Everyone must have thought he was joking, because no one stopped him as he ran over to the door and turned the key latch. He stepped out, and a cigarette and orange flame appeared like a magic trick from his pocket. Then, he took a long drag and exhaled a puff of smoke and began walking a few feet to the right, towards the liquor store.

Through the blinds, Cheryl, Mark, and a few others watched as a group of bedraggled-looking Eaters, two men and a woman, who had been shuffling about in the road, lifted their heads and sniffed the air...and then started coming towards him.

Ed held up his hands. “No need for alarm, people. I’m just passing through—“

The man in a grey houndstooth suit nearest to the sidewalk picked up speed. His head shook from side to side as he did an unsteady zigzag towards Ed. The inhuman like walk was even odder, because his face was skeletal—a bony mishmash of scraps of skin and flesh. His teeth snapped back and forth like a steel trap, and drool slithered down his chin. The appearance was so horrific, if Cheryl didn’t know better, she’d have thought it was an actor who’d spent a few hours in a makeup chair getting ready for a performance on Halloween night.

Surprisingly, Ed didn’t flinch. He held his ground as if he thought he could ‘take’ the man. Cheryl wondered if he was right. The Eater looked frail, literally like a walking corpse. Wouldn’t it be easy to just give him a sucker punch and knock him down? It seemed possible—his body was so ravaged by the disease, perhaps by that stage, he was less of a threat than his nightmarish appearance suggested.

The Eater stumbled up over the curb then came towards Ed with his fingers outstretched like claws. The couple behind him, who were obviously sick, but not in an as advanced state of decay, did the same.

Ed hesitated for a second as if he didn’t know whether to keep going forward or back up a couple of steps towards the sandwich shop.

Before he could make up his mind, the first Eater reached him and grabbed at his shirt.

“Hey!” Ed yelled as he dropped the cigarette and batted the gnarled hand away. “Back off, buddy!”

They surrounded him, closing in like a pack of wolves.

Cheryl panicked. “We gotta do something to save him. Mark…go out there and shoot them!”

But, Mark shook his head. “If I did, the sound of the gunfire might draw attention to us. He was stupid…he shouldn’t have…”

By now, any window of rescue was gone. As the Eaters began ripping and tearing at his clothing, skin, and hair, Ed fell down to his knees and curled up into a defensive position with his hands covering his head.

Cheryl looked away, with tears streaming down her cheeks as they tore him apart, one fistful at a time, like they were the devil’s two-year-olds, and he was a blood-filled birthday cake.

Chapter 6

Two days later…very little had changed with their situation, except for the unfortunate drop in the number of survivors in the shop. After Ed’s death, three people had shown signs of the sickness. It started with a fever, followed by welts and ashen skin. After the first one collapsed and seemed dead, they dragged his body to the cooler, but before they could shut the door, he sprang up and tried to attack the shop employee, Steve. Mark shot him just in time. After that, they didn’t take chances. As soon as someone collapsed and no longer had a pulse, a couple of gunshots to the head ensured that they’d stay dead.

Now, they were down to eighteen.

The generator had pooped out a day back, and the power hadn’t come back on. The weather outside was hot, and the thermostat inside the shop read over ninety. Since the meat was spoiling quickly, they’d been eating the bread, chips, and condiments instead. There was still running water. But, someone had heard from a friend over the phone that it wasn’t safe to drink the tap water, though they didn’t know why. There was still soda in the machines, but it was starting to taste flat and stale. Cheryl drank it anyway. The sweet taste and caffeine was almost like a treat since the chocolate chip cookies were long gone.

She envied the survivalists now, holed up in their shelters with a stockpile of rifles, ammunition, canned foods and assorted comforts. They must be laughing at all the naysayers now. She’d never taken much stock in the gloom and doom philosophy, but now she wished that she’d paid just a little more attention. Of course, a stockpile of rice and beans and jugs of water in her apartment wouldn’t be much good right now.

With the stifling heat, people had begun to make fans out of the sandwich menus and the wannabe comedians in their crowd tried to lighten things up with jokes.

“Hey, maybe this will make the trash companies obsolete. Every block will have it’s own composting zombie. You can just throw your scraps on your neighbor’s lawn, and he’ll eat ‘em right up. Of course, you have to make sure he doesn’t take your arm or your leg at the same time.”

Cheryl laughed, doubling over in pain as another deranged thought came into her mind. “What if the Eaters become a new consumer group. There’ll be a new Eaters Food Network with recipes for bloody rotting steak, maggot soup, gourmet moldy cheese…”

“Yeah…” someone else chimed in. “That’s great…until you find out the secret ingredient in their soup is stewed thigh bone and a cup of human brains.”

Mark leaned over and kissed her on the forehead and grinned. “You’ve got a terribly sick mind.”

“I’ve got to keep it going,” she admitted. “If I try to play this straight…I’ll lose it.”

But, soon the conversation turned more serious as a man close by said, “There’s got to be authorities somewhere rounding them up. Why don’t they just take them out to the city dump and barricade them in? They could feast there…and leave everyone else alone.”

“And then what?” someone replied. “Once they ran out of crap to eat, they wouldn’t stay there. They’d attack the guards and get loose again. Have you seen even one damn cop out there since the idiot who got himself killed? Maybe they’ve all split and we’re in an abandoned zone.”

It was true, Cheryl thought. They hadn’t seen another police officer, no National Guard, no ambulances, not even a single car going down the street. Was it just this part of town? Or was the whole the country in crisis?

The first good news came in the afternoon. Gary found an old battery-operated radio in the supply room, hidden behind a stash of paper towels. It was unusual luck on top of that to actually find a few ‘C’ batteries that still had juice in them.

At first, there was nothing but static. But, he eventually found a station on the A.M. band that was still broadcasting. The announcer said that Governor Weiss had issued a ‘State of Emergency’, and there were Red Cross shelters setting up around the Denver area. When he mentioned one at the First Savior Church on 52nd & Taylor, the group huddled around the radio cheered.

“That’s just three blocks away from here!”

Cheryl wasn’t as optimistic. Three blocks. That was a lot further away than it sounded if you were trying to fend off mobs of infected flesh-eaters.

The woman with the young girl on her hip—probably five or six years old, but sucking her thumb to ease her stress—said, “You know…we can’t stay here much longer. We’re going to have to take our chances and try to get to it.”

“That’s a given,” the man behind her said.

“Why don’t we try to go now? We could just run to our cars and—”

Mark was less optimistic. “There’s eighteen of us. You want to take the chance that we’ll all make it? Besides, we heard a lot of glass breaking last night. For all we know, it was car windows being smashed. I don’t think I’d want to make that drive in a make-shift convertible. That kind of ballsy crap might work for BruceWillis or WillSmith in a movie, but I’m not about to test my stunt driving and my luck.”

Cheryl silently agreed. There were so many Eaters still roaming outside, it didn’t seem safe to try to leave, at least not until some sense of order had been restored.

They took a vote, and by a narrow margin, it was decided that they should wait a little longer. There was still food and some soda, so they weren’t at risk of starving yet. But, with this many people, they might run out in another two to three days.

After declaring a truce and deciding that cooperation was their only chance for survival, Mark and Gary teamed up as leaders. They started organized shifts of volunteers to take turns watching out the window, listening to the radio, and attempting calls on the few remaining working cell phones.

Cheryl signed up for a window watch position, but she wasn’t sure why.  She guessed that, despite the awful scene outside, it would be easier than trying to call out on a phone to people who weren’t answering or listen to bad news on the radio, since the announcer seemed to have more pessimistic things to say than hopeful comments recently.

Early that evening, Mark left his makeshift command post behind the counter and came over to her spot on the bench. “Cheryl…try and get some sleep. Your shift starts at 5 a.m.”

“I’m exhausted, but I don’t know if I can.”

She hugged her knees as she curled up into a ball on the hard plastic bench. A paper bag filled with napkins served as her pillow, and it was already soaked with her sweat.

He reached down and patted her on the head. “You’d better get some rest while you can.”

Rest? Rest didn’t seem like a real option when the world had gone insane, and their lives were in danger. Was this similar to what Mark had endured, trying to sleep in a war zone? She’d only been here a couple of nights, and the stress was already taking its toll. It was hard to believe that just three days ago, she’d been camping with Mark, lying under a glittering sky of stars and dreaming of their future together. Life can change in the blink of an eye…

Eventually, she did manage to fall asleep. It was almost dawn when he woke her. He took her place on the bench, trying his best to make himself fit, but his boots dangled a good six inches off the end.

She went to her post at the window, peeked through the blinds and saw just a tinge of pink in the eastern sky. There were a dozen Eaters mulling about in the park across the street, and Cheryl was glad that she couldn’t see that well yet. She didn’t want to see the food stains, the bloody clothes, or their dead eyes. She was still baffled as to how human beings could turn into the walking dead—mindless vultures that ate slime from garbage bins and human flesh. It all had happened so quickly; it just didn’t make any sense. Despite Mark’s explanation of an origin for the virus, nobody seemed to have any clue how it was transmitted to so many people so fast.

Most of the group was still asleep behind her. Even so, there were very few quiet minutes without a slew of grumbles, moans, and complaints, because everyone was getting more restless and cranky. She supposed that was normal, considering the dwindling reasons for optimism. Some were strangely silent though, as if they’d made peace with their maker and were resolved to whatever fate awaited. Others, not taking the situation so well, sobbed softly to themselves.

“I can’t sleep. It fuckin’ stinks in here.”

Another random voice scolded. “Shutup. Tell us something we don’t know.”

Even though they’d put all the rotting meat in the cooler with the dead bodies, she could smell it too. Dead flesh. She tried not to gag thinking about it. She also tried not to think about the flies. How did they get in here anyway? She hadn’t remembered seeing any inside during the first day. Every time they killed them, more seemed to spontaneously appear.

Mark raised his head and yelled into the darkness. “If we stay here, we’ll have to dump the meat and the bodies soon.”

Cheryl wondered how they were going to do that. If they just hoisted everything out the door, there’d be a feeding frenzy that would attract untold numbers of Eaters to their location. It would be a dangerous move. But, for sanity and health reasons…it was going to have to be done at some point…if they stayed.

Her wandering thoughts stopped as a movement across the road caught her eye. She raised the blind a little higher and squinted through the window.

Mark, who had obviously been watching her from behind instead of trying to rest, noticed. “What’s going on out there?”

“There are too many trees in the park. I can’t see a thing past them, but I thought I saw—”

Cheryl realized that a woman was standing twelve inches away from her on the other side of the glass, staring directly at her through the window with opaque eyes that looked like they were completely blind from cataracts. It was obvious that she was an Eater with half of her face, nothing but the white bone of pure skull, as if someone had eaten it off.

Not knowing if the woman could even see her, Cheryl didn’t move for a second. But then, as if he’d manifested from the air itself, a man suddenly appeared next to her. His face was a pasty whitish-gray and peeling like the paint from an old barn. There were black half-moons under his eyes, and a slick redness to his lips that she knew didn’t come from makeup. His dark tongue swirled around his lips then he licked the glass, tasting it like it was made of sugar. There was no doubt that the black marbles that were his eyes… had seen her.

She dropped the blind and backed away. “They know we’re in here…”

Before Mark could jump up, the loud sound of fists pounding on the glass rang out.

As he scrambled to wake everyone, she kept backing up, tripping over people on the floor. How long? How long had they known? Since Ed opened had opened the front door and let out a whiff of the rotting meat inside? The movement in the park that had gotten her attention before the faces appeared at the window had looked like a group forming a circle…some sort of meeting. She whispered out loud to Mark and to the universe as she felt the blood drain from her face, “We have to get out of here.”

Mark didn’t question her. He seemed to intuitively know what she had seen as he hopped to his feet and spoke in a hushed, but sharp tone. “Everyone…get up! Back door…now!”

One by one, the sleeping were roused, and they all quickly headed towards the back of the shop.

Mark pushed to the lead with Gary on his heels. “Grab anything you can to take as a weapon. If an Eater messes with you, aim for the head. And…for God sakes, stick together. If you get separated, we’re not coming to look for you.”

Cheryl ran behind the counter. She’d seen a gleam of metal underneath some shelves and was elated to find out that it was a knife. But, when she reached down and pulled it out, her optimism disappeared. It was a bread knife with a long serrated blade and a dull rounded tip. It would only do her some good if an attacker would be kind enough to stand still while she slowly sawed off an appendage.

The woman next to her in the sundress didn’t seem to see the problem. “Lucky!” Then, she grabbed a thin metal skewer off the counter, pulled the card off that said, “Today’s Special—Turkey Swiss Melt on Rye” and held the pointed end out like a sword.

The sound of breaking glass told Cheryl that there was no more time to search for a more suitable weapon. Pandemonium broke out as the group lunged forward. Using elbows and fingernails, she had begun inching towards the back of the store, trying to find Mark, when she felt a sharp poke in her back.

“Hey…Pixie!”

She turned around. It was the foul-mouthed witch that she’d tussled with earlier, and there was a long carving knife in her hand.

“Don’t worry…I got your back,” she said with snarled lips.

Cheryl ignored her. There was no time for vendettas, so she pushed on. When she reached Mark and Gary, at the back door, her face fell as she realized there were no windows in the back—no way to tell if there was a hoard of Eaters waiting in the alley for them to emerge.

Mark’s hand trembled on the door handle. He took a deep breath like he was steeling himself to open it. The nudge he needed came from more sounds of breaking glass from the front of the shop.

“Let’s go…”

Cheryl held on to the back of his shirt as he pushed the door open a crack and peered outside. At the same time, she looked back, wondering how many seconds they had before the Eaters were at their heels. She hoped they’d be stalled at the decaying meat in the cooler.

“It’s clear,” Mark said as he pushed the door open the rest of the way.

They tiptoed at first, but then the people in the rear got anxious and started pushing, causing them to fall out into the alley. She and Mark crashed over the top of a metal trashcan that was lying on its side behind the door.

So much for a quiet exit.

“Where’s the church?” she said as they picked themselves up and the rest of the group barreled out.

“Not far. I know where it is,” Mark said.

She continued to cling to him as they made their way down the alley. After being locked up with the spoiled meat, the fresh air was refreshing. It gave her hope. She couldn’t wait to get somewhere safe where, hopefully, she could have a shower, a change of clothes, and a decent night’s sleep.

But, her optimism didn’t last as she looked down the alley ahead of them and saw that it was covered with trash. There were boxes, empty soda bottles, pieces of paper dancing in circular eddies of wind. It looked like they’d walked out into a ghost town.

Loud grunts and yells came out of the shop behind them, then the sound of more glass breaking.

“Come on,” Mark said as he motioned the group to follow him.

As they began to walk down the alley, Cheryl thought they must look more like an angry mob than a band of refugees. Some of them wielded knives, metal baking sheets, or broken wooden chair legs that looked ready to stake the nearest vampire.

They ran over the tops of bodies and…even more disgusting…body parts…strewn about. But, there was no time to dwell on the horror of it—they had to get to the shelter before the hoard of Eaters from the park discovered them out in the open.

One block away, they saw a few of the infected lying in front of a grocery store that had broken windows. They were moaning, but not moving, and Cheryl figured that they were either in the early stages of the disease…or an advanced stage…and near temporary death.

They were one more block down when an old woman ran up beside her—not someone from her group. Her dress was splayed open, and her flat bony chest was roadmap of gore. She hissed, “They’re like sin eaters, you know. They eat the blackest parts of people—the parts hidden inside.”

The woman tried to grab her, but Cheryl shook her off, choking down the scream that lodged in her throat.

But, the scream threatened to escape when she noticed a dark speck two blocks back that multiplied into two, then three, then ten, then a hundred…

It was a hoard of Eaters on their tail…and they were closing fast.

Chapter 7

As they rounded the corner onto Taylor Street, the sight of armed guards with guns outside First Savior Church was the most heart-warming sight that Cheryl thought she’d ever seen, but the warmth abruptly ended as the gun barrels pointed at them.

Mark held up his hands, and the group mimicked him as they slowed down to a walk.

“We’re clean. There’s infected coming right behind us. Let us in, please!”

The head guard, a man in Army fatigues, similar to Mark’s motioned for the group to join the line behind them near the entrance.

Mark grabbed Cheryl’s face in his hands and kissed her. Then, he un-shouldered his rifle. “You go in. I’m going to stay out here and help.”

“No…” she begged. She didn’t want to leave him for a mass of strangers.

“I’ll find you soon. I promise…”

They parted as the gunfire began. Mark joined the ranks of soldiers and armed civilians that had begun mowing down the dozens and dozens of Eaters that had followed them, and she headed for the line near the door.

She nudged the man in front of her with a mop of straw-colored hair and a Hawaiian shirt, tapping his toe to the sound of the gunfire. “Hey,” she yelled. “What’s taking so long to get in?”

He grinned a toothy smile as he turned around and gave her a quick up and down with his crinkled eyes. “It’s a test everyone has to pass to get inside.”

She could smell the ganja now on his breath. She imagined that he must have had one last fat one before giving up the attempt to make it on his own. She hoped for his sake that the test wasn’t any sort of drug test.

“What kind of test? I hope it isn’t something I was supposed to study for.”

The guy laughed at her joke…and laughed...and laughed. For a minute, he doubled over and smacked his knee. Musta been some good ganja, she thought as he tried to compose himself, which took a few more seconds.

“They’ve got a bucket with raw ground beef in it—seven days old.”

He was dead serious now—not joking.

“Gross,” she said, making a face.

He turned back around and began humming a song to himself, slapping his knee to keep time.

As the line moved up a few feet, she saw a couple of armed guards leading a teenaged boy away. His head was hung low with stringy dark hair covering his cheeks, mostly hiding a drooling sneer underneath. They disappeared around the backside of the building. Then, there were two quick gunshots, and the guards came back alone.

Cheryl tried to choke back the sadness of what she knew had just happened.

When she reached the front of the line, the stench from the bucket thrust in her face, made her gag. She covered her mouth to hold back the urge to vomit. Seeing her reaction, the guard waved her through.

The inside of the church was wall-to-wall people. They covered the aisles, the pews, and the stage. There were crying babies, and lots of screaming and shouting. Cheryl’s first thought was that it was much worse than the sandwich shop refuge. But, this building had few windows, so it was safer. There were a few rectangles of clear glass near the ceiling, but the only other windows were thin vertical panes of colorful stained glass. Overall, with the armed men outside—it was the closest thing to a haven that she could imagine, given the situation.

She felt a tug on her sleeve and turned to find the woman in the sundress from the sandwich shop. “We made it, hunh?”

Cheryl smiled. “Yeah. I guess we did.”

“I’m Katherine, by the way.”

Cheryl took her outstretched hand. “Cheryl. Nice to meet you.”

“Where do we bunk? It doesn’t look like there’s any room.”

She looked around. “How about over there?” She pointed towards a three-by-three foot area near the restrooms.

A woman next to them with long jet black hair, graying at the temples, shook her head. “Oh…I wouldn’t go there,” she said as she fingered the gold cross on her neck. “When people get sick, it’s the first place they go. That’s why there’s no one near the doors.”

Then, she squinted and looked at them, wrinkling her nose. “You two healthy?”

“Yes,” they both said in unison.

“There’s a small space behind the pulpit. You won’t have any legroom, but it’s better than standing all the time.”

They nodded and followed her, stepping over blankets and coolers, heads and feet, until they reached the stage area. The woman led them to the center where she’d made a tent out of a bedsheet attached to the tall wooden structure.

As they crawled underneath, the woman turned to Cheryl.

“You should put on something else. That blood will make people uneasy.”

Cheryl looked down at her skirt. The stain that she’d gotten from falling on the sidewalk seemed to have spread and looked highly obvious against the light blue cotton.

“My name is Morena. I’m a parishioner here.” She fumbled in a duffel bag then pulled out a long skirt, a paisley quilted patchwork that looked like it was homemade. “Put this on.”

There was no sense in clinging to modesty or fashion snobbery, so Cheryl took the skirt and exchanged it for her dirty one.

When she finished, Katherine asked, “So what do you know about what’s going on?”

Morena hesitated then said, “We’ve got a few hundred packed inside here. There’s water, but very little food. You’re lucky that you came when you did, because I think they’re going to stop taking people after today. There’s just no more room.”

“What about out there?” Cheryl asked. “Is there anyone starting to round up the Eaters?”

“The what?”

“The Eaters. That’s what my fiancée calls them.” She almost went into his story about the dogs and infected in Afghanistan, but stopped herself, thinking that it might not be wise to say too much.

“We just call them, The Sick. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on outside. Whatever is happening out there is God’s will.”

The flap of the tent flipped up and the face of an older woman with short, cropped silver hair peeked in. “Tell them what I told you.”

“No,” Morena said. “You’ve got no proof.”

“I know what I heard, and I believe it. It makes sense.”

“Fine, Gail. Tell them then. They aren’t going to believe you anyway.”

Gail scooted under the sheet and crammed her way in. “There’s a rumor going around about how this all spread.”

Cheryl and Katherine held their breath.

“It usually takes a while for viruses to proliferate with all the sneezing and skin contact and whatnot. This all happened so fast…some people are saying it’s spread by mosquitoes.”

Cheryl felt an electric ripple of fear down her spine. Her mouth went dry, and she felt her face flush.

“Mosquitoes?” Katherine said. “I’ve heard of them spreading malaria and West Nile virus, but never anything else.”

“Think about it. Millions of people outside for Fourth of July. Then, wham bam! All of a sudden, everyone’s getting sick. I’m telling you…it’s no coincidence. I bet mosquitoes all over the country had a blood feast this past weekend, and a lot of them were carrying this disease.

Cheryl started twisting her diamond engagement ring back and forth on her finger. How many times had she been bit on the camping trip? She hadn’t even thought about it until now. With all the adrenaline coursing through her for the past couple of days, she hadn’t noticed the bites. But now, she could feel the itchy welts all over her body. Thank goodness they were hidden by her long sleeved jacket and the long skirt. She realized that at some point, she was going to start feeling sick, and was going to die once, then a second time when she was shot in the head. Oh…what a horrible way to go. It was so unfair! She didn’t deserve it. She wanted this nightmare to end. She and Mark were going to be married next year…and take a cruise to Jamaica…and—

Wait. The mosquitoes never touched him. If this epidemic ended and life returned to normal…he was going to survive…

“Cheryl? You all right?”

She looked over at Katherine in her ‘pretty as a picture’ sundress. Who was this woman…and why did she get to live? Why did any of them…and not her?

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she lied. No sense in sounding an alarm to say, ‘kill me now…I might be infected’. “I could really use some rest though. I’m tired.”

Morena let her use the duffel bag as a pillow when she regretfully realized that she’d left her purse behind at the sandwich shop. Then, the three of them left to see if they could bargain for some food or water.

As Cheryl lay there, she felt like she was getting a fever. But, she told herself that it was just hot and was probably her imagination. She tried to relax despite the cacophony around her. Eventually, fatigue took over, and she fell asleep.

A few minutes later, she woke with hands tightening around her throat. Gasping for air, she opened her eyes and saw the smoking witch straddling her. The woman was obviously sick now. Her eyes were bloodshot and her skin looked as dark as ash. Cheryl struggled to push her off without success. With her throat constricted, she couldn’t even scream.

This is an even stupider end, she thought as her head felt light from lack of oxygen. But then, she noticed the carving knife on the floor. She grabbed it, just a second too late. The woman saw and knocked it out of her hand, sending it skittering out under the tent.

With no other means of defense, Cheryl stretched up and bit the woman’s hand before it returned to her throat.

The woman let out a shrill scream then slapped Cheryl across the face.

Then…in the blink of an eye…she was gone.

Cheryl sat up and started coughing and gagging. She threw the sheet open to get some air, causing a slew of nearby campers to stare.

As she slowly started to breathe again, she realized that there was the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. If she hadn’t been infected before, she certainly was now.

A few minutes later, Katherine and Morena came back.

“Five bucks a donut! Can you believe it?” Katherine took the paper towel off the top of the paper plate, revealing three glazed donuts and one with chocolate icing. “And look…they got mold on them!”

Before she had a chance to think about asking or paying them or consider the type and quantity of mold, Cheryl snatched one off the plate and stuffed it into her mouth. It was truly stale and hard, but the sugary flavor was ecstasy in her mouth. She ate the whole thing with just a few chews.

The ladies stared at her.

Then, the embarrassment hit. What did I just do? Am I sick? Why did I do that? “I’m really sorry. I guess I was just really hungry. I’ll pay you back later. I promise.”

Morena shook her head then turned to Katherine. “Uhhh…you want one now?”

“No thanks. I’m still too queasy from the entry exam. I’ll save mine for later.”

Later that afternoon, they kicked her out of the tent. As she wandered around looking for another spot, she saw Morena talking to a man with a holstered gun and pointing to her.

Great. She was marked now.

She eventually resigned herself to a spot just a few feet away from the restroom. She was so dehydrated from sweating and the lack of water that she only had to venture in once. It was a quick unpleasant trip, and she had to use the toilet as sick people lay around it.

As evening advanced and the light grew dimmer, the building got a little quieter. The dominant sounds were coughing and whimpering, instead of the frenzied voices from earlier. She leaned against the wall, next to a pedestal topped with a vase of mums, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and had just begun to wonder when or if she’d see Mark again when she heard a voice in front of her.

“Cheryl…”

Like she’d conjured him just by thinking about him…it was him.

“Hey…come on.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

A piercing scream came from the direction of the bathroom, and she saw two men rush in with guns.

When she turned back to Mark, she saw him untying the laces on his boots.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. He just kept loosening the laces. Then, he began unbuttoning his camouflage shirt that said Breton on the pocket. He handed it to her. “Put this on.”

“Why? It’s hot. I don’t want—”

“Just do it, Cheryl. I have my reasons.”

She took off her light cotton blazer, and put it on over the camisole she had on underneath. It was stifling hot, and heavy, and the sleeves were several inches too long.

He began undoing his belt.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“You can’t wear that long skirt. I want you to put on my pants too.”

“Jeez. And, you’re going to just strip right here? Why are you doing this?”

He pulled her back into the shadow of a big wreath of mums that she figured had been from a funeral at the church…a few days ago when such things were possible. Then, he took off his pants and stood there in his boxers and t-shirt, waiting for her to finish dressing.

She felt like a rag doll in the oversized clothes. She wondered what was going on as he pulled her into his arms.

“You’re healthy, aren’t you?”

She nodded into his chest, because she didn’t want to tell him that she thought she was infected.

“I’m not.” As he stepped out into a ray of light from a lantern glowing on a nearby ledge, she could see dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and an angry rash on his bristled cheeks.

“Oh God, Mark. No…”

“Listen to me. You need to get of this building. It’s not safe to stay.”

“But, where are we going to go?”

“Not we…you.”

“She pulled back and hit him lightly on the chest. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“You have to. You can’t stay with me anyway. I’m done. I’m infected.”

She tossed her head from side to side. “No…you can’t be. You didn’t get bit. I’m the one who got bit. I’ve got the sickness.”

“What are you talking about? You look perfectly fine.”

“The mosquitoes…camping…I was bit all over. That’s how it’s transmitted. You didn’t even put on bug spray…they didn’t even touch you.”

It suddenly dawned on her why. Because he was already infected.

“No…no…no...no!”

“I didn’t tell you everything about the dogs and the sickness. None of the men in my unit got infected. That’s because we were guinea pigs for some sort of vaccine…but me…being the stubborn bastard that I am…refused to take part. I guess it was my “inner rebel” or something that made me spit out the pill out when no one was looking. Back then, I didn’t know what the hell they were trying to give us—no one did. I just didn’t want to be any part of a human experiment. But, I guess I got a little of it in my system, enough to lengthen the incubation period. I thought I’d beat it. I thought I was just immune or something. I was fine…until just a few hours ago.”

“Mark…I’m sick too. Or, I will be. Even if I didn’t get it from the mosquitoes…I got it from biting that bitch from the sandwich shop.”

“What?”

“She attacked me…tried to strangle me…and I bit her. She was definitely sick.”

“Well…you don’t know for sure that you have it, so there’s no point in assuming.”

“Why do we have to go anyway? Stay here with me…”

He began to sob onto her shoulder. “I can’t stay with you. I don’t want to get sicker…and…and hurt you.”

“Well, I’m not going. What if you pull through. What if—”

“Go anywhere. Just get out.” He pointed towards a window high up on the wall. She could see a glowing orange light waving back and forth. It looked like a baseball bat, wrapped in cloth, and lit as a torch.

“There’s too many sick in here, and they don’t want them to get out. In a few minutes, they’re going to lock the doors and set the building on fire.”

Chapter 8

He took her hand in an inescapable steel grip, forced her down a hall, and into the kitchen towards a side door. Then, he held her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. After he pulled away, he strapped his rifle onto her shoulder.

“You remember that day I took you hunting and showed you how to shoot?”

She remembered. She’d refused to aim at any live creatures and insisted on using cans as targets instead. She’d felt awkward and clumsy with the rifle but eventually managed to hit a few cans off the stump.

“There’s extra ammo in the shirt pockets.”

“I can’t do this, Mark.”

“Yes…you can. And I want you to keep going as long as you can. Keep fighting until the end…you hear me?”

She nodded, upset that her tears were keeping her from getting one last clear look at his face. She put her hands over the rough stubble on his cheeks and held them.

How did she know that she wasn’t infected, and this was just a useless effort to try and survive when she was doomed anyway? With all their love making over the weekend, wasn’t it a given that he’d passed the infection on to her? A little voice in her head said, maybe not…not without coming in direct contact with blood.

“Go…they’re going to lock the doors any second. With that uniform on, you might be able to blend in for a few seconds in the dark…just enough time to get away.”

He didn’t give her another chance to refuse. He pushed her out the door, and locked it behind her.

She found herself in a courtyard next to a garden. There was a group of soldiers near the left corner of the building. They were busy lighting more torches.

She walked slowly at first in the other direction with a determined stride as if she was heading towards some important task. But, once she got past the garden bed and knew that the soldiers’ view was blocked by the tall sunflowers, she began to run.

Running. Running. Like a wild animal, she went. Probably towards greater dangers…

She kept going through an empty parking lot, past dark stores, and eventually houses as she found herself in a neighborhood.

Then, out of breath, with a painful stitch in her right side, she slowed to a walk. She’d only gone a few more yards and turned down an alley when she heard a growl behind her.

Please let it be a dog…a big stupid dog.

But, when she stopped and looked…it wasn’t.

It was a man…or something that used to be a man. Now, this large shirtless fellow with stained shorts, peeling skin, and meat hooks for hands, was a brainless eating machine…and he stood on the sidewalk looking at her like she was his next meal.

Adrenaline zipped through her, causing her heart and thoughts to race.

It wasn’t her life that flashed through her mind; it was Mark. She suddenly found herself remembering his proposal to her on the night before he left for Afghanistan. He’d taken her to dinner at a French restaurant downtown and sweet-talked her into ordering the escargot. When it came, she found the ring hidden inside a shell. She laughed and cried then they danced on the terrace underneath a swath of starry white lights as a violinist serenaded them from below.

The memory of that night made her angry.

This was not how her life was supposed to go. She was supposed to be looking forward to a lifetime with the man that she loved—not standing in some stinking alley with some stupid zombie about to rip out her entrails with its teeth.

Every atom of fear in her body turned to rage as she un-shouldered the rifle.

The Eater took a few shuffling steps towards her and growled again as she aimed.

“Eat this!”

She fired one round straight into his head. It exploded like a strawberry, splattering mashed red fruit all over the pavement.

Then, she turned and kept going in the same direction as before, trying to be a little quieter and blend into the night.

What else could she do but keep going until the last tiny shred of hope was gone? Not for herself…but for Mark. It was what he’d wanted her to do.

***

THE END

Cheryl's struggle to survive in the world of the Eaters continues in Eaters: Dark Journey (coming in spring 2011) and Eaters: Destination (coming in summer 2011).