It's been a month since the wedding, and I'm back to writing!
It inevitable that as soon as it starts to feel like fall outside my imagination begins to prepare for Halloween. I say this because, for the last three years, I've written a zombie story in the first or second week of September. I can't help it; I LOVE Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. I also love being scared (horror movie scared, not plane-dropping-out-of-the-sky scared). You're probably better off reading
the first part (new window) and
the second part (new window) to fully understand what's going on, and look for more scary fun as Halloween approaches. Enjoy!
"Hostile Territory"
Aaron M. Smith- September 6th, 2011
“Clear,” Donny said,
peeking through the shattered remains of the gas station door. Sam and I
stepped carefully through the broken glass littering the linoleum floor, my
flashlight playing over the scene of chaos inside. Sam had a submachine gun in
his hands. I couldn’t think about using a gun since we took the Explorer back
in New Bethlehem. I carried a crowbar instead.
That was nearly an hour
ago, and I still couldn’t shake the image from my brain. The thing (it didn’t
seem right to call it a person anymore) with the red eyes climbing out of the
back seat, coming for me. I’d plugged nine rounds from a glock into it before
I’d even thought about it.
I never thought I was
capable of that.
“Mike? You with us?”
Donny’s voice snapped me back into reality. I nodded. “You’ve hardly said a
word, dude. You okay?”
“We got jerky.” Sam
said, stuffing as much Jack Links as he could carry into a nylon duffel bag.
“Come on, we have to
get supplies and get back on the road,” I said. Focus on the task at hand. Don’t think what happened, or what’s going
to happen. Stay alive right now.
I started filling my
bag with bottled water. Donny walked around behind the counter. I thought I saw
him eyeing the liquor bottles.
“Donny, we don’t have time to go on a bender,”
I said, loud enough for Sam to hear. I turned and saw Sam with a case of Bud
Light under each arm. He pouted like a six year old before he sat the beer down
on the floor.
“How far until we get
into Pennsylvania downtown?” I asked.
“Not far, like nine
miles,” Sam answered. “I just wanted to stock up now, in case everything is
already gone when we get there.” I’d known Sam for a couple years, but never
very well. He’d always walked around with a chip on his shoulder. What the
three of us had seen in the last twenty-four hours had changed him. I wouldn’t
say he was nicer, exactly. Just more serious, I guess.
A sudden scraping noise
made all three of us jump. In the darkness at the back of the store, one of the
display shelves had toppled over. Something was moving beneath it.
I prayed Sam and Donny
couldn’t see my knees shaking as we fanned out, surrounding the overturned
plywood shelf, bags of chips crunching under our feet. I trained my flashlight
on the shelf. Donny gently laid his shotgun down and gripped the shelf, and Sam
had a white-knuckle grip on his gun. Donny mouthed a silent three-count: Three, two one…
He hefted the shelf
upright.
The creature beneath it
hissed as the weight was lifted off of its mangled body. She was, or used to
be, I guess, a middle-aged woman. Both her legs were shattered, bone protruding
at horrible angles. She didn’t seem to notice, though, as she struggled to get
to her feet, arms flailing in Sam’s direction.
And those horrible,
totally red eyes, like all the blood vessels had ruptured at once.
She didn’t stand a
chance. Sam’s little submachine gun barked a dozen times before I could count,
the muzzle flash blinding in the darkened store. The monster fell back on the
linoleum, still. Red-black blood, not enough to have come from anything still
alive, dribbled lazily across the floor.
“Did anything hear
that?” Donny asked.
“I don’t know,” I said,
eager to look away from the grizzly scene. I walked to the window and looked
out. And suddenly wished I hadn’t.
“Oh, shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Hissed
Sam.
“They found the car.”
“Who did?” asked Donny.
I turned to him and
rolled my eyes. “Who do you think?” I pointed into the parking lot, where we’d
left our “borrowed” Explorer. There were six or seven zombies staggering around
it, most of them pressing against or leaning on the hood.
“What’re they doing?”
Donny asked.
“Looks like they’re
drawn to the heat,” I said.
“Shit,” Sam grunted,
cocking the SMG again. “I didn’t want to have to blow all my ammo on this run.”
“Don’t!” I hissed,
trying to keep my voice down. “If you hit the car, we might have to walk
downtown!” I glanced around the station, my eyes landing on the liquor behind
the counter. “I might have an idea. Hang on.”
I don’t drink, but I
played enough video games to know how a Molotov cocktail works. I fished around
behind the counter to find the bottle with the highest proof and a little
plastic lighter. I found a dry towel in the utility room and screwed off the
cap, cramming the rag inside. Whatever I’d picked up, it smelled like paint
thinner and pine needles. I sat the bag that I’d filled with bottled water and
my flashlight near the side door of the station and looked out into the
darkness.
“Get ready to head to
the car,” I whispered over my shoulder. Donny and Sam started to argue, but I
was out the door and didn’t hear them.
Around the side of the
station, I found what I was looking for. A huge tank of kerosene sat at the
back of the lot. There wasn’t a zombie in sight; I tiptoed over to it, suddenly
wishing I hadn’t left the flashlight in the station. The liquor bottle in my
back pocket, I took two steps back and swung the crowbar with all my might into
the tank, where the hose met the metal body.
The clang! Was a lot louder than I expected,
but the hose tore free from the tank. A sharp, pungent odor filled my nose as
the fuel began to slosh out across the parking lot. I turned around to get
clear before lighting it up.
And found myself face
to face with a huge man wearing blood-smeared coveralls. He grunted and lunged
at me in the darkness.
Fear like a living
thing leapt in my stomach, and I cried out. My shoulders reacted before I could
tell them to, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat. The hit was clumsy, but
it did the trick; there was a sick, wet thud
as the tool shattered some of the zombie’s ribs. The blow was so fierce I lost
my grip on the crowbar and it spun from my fingers, clanging to the concrete.
The zombie didn’t seem to feel any pain, but the blow staggered it.
“Mike!” Donny cried
from the station, no longer worried about keeping his voice down.
“Get to the car!” I
screamed. I yanked the bottle from my back pocket as I ran. The monster I’d just
clobbered was shuffling in the darkness to my left; I had only seconds. My
thumb fumbled on the plastic lighter. A weak little flame flicked into life on
the third try, and I lit the soaked rag hanging out of the little glass bottle.
In the flickering orange flame, I saw the mechanic take a step toward me.
I chucked the bottle
overhand at him.
The flaming bottle
bounced heavily off of his skull but didn’t break. It tumbled down his belly,
dribbling flaming liquor across the corpse in a blazing salvo. When it hit the
concrete at the base of the kerosene tank, it shattered.
The kerosene ignited
into brilliant blue flame, the heat searing the back of my neck even as I dove
back into the abandoned station.
Donny and Sam didn’t
say anything as we snatched up the items we’d packed away. Sure enough, the
zombies that had gathered around our car were starting to shamble in the
direction of the kerosene blaze. They totally ignored us as we slipped past
them.
I heard the whistling
sound just as I was closing the back door and Sam started the engine.
“Drive!” I screamed, and Sam stomped the gas.
Our tires squealed as
we peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the zombies and the flames behind us.
And that was when the
whole place exploded.
The whistling rose to a
piercing shriek, and then a sound like a rushing waterfall and a wave of heat
that could’ve fried eggs rushed over the whole car. I felt the force shove us
across the road and Sam fight to maintain control of the Explorer. I turned
around and looked out the back window; the plume of smoke and flames lit up the
night sky like daylight.
We were two hundred
yards away when the pumps went up. Columns of smoke, shifting eerily in the
dancing orange flames beneath, began to engulf the whole station until I
couldn’t see anything but black smoke and yellow light.
I turned back around and leaned on the seat,
exhausted. The three of us drove in silence for several minutes before Donny
said,
“Hey, look at the bright side. If anyone’s alive, they
had to have seen that, right?”
“Yeah, Don,” Sam said, his voice tired, “We just sent
up a big damn smoke signal.”
“Who got Ho-Hos?” I said, pulling the
cellophane-wrapped cake from one of our duffel bags.
“Those are mine, hands off,” Sam said.
“I earned this,” I said, and I made a show of slowly
tearing off the wrapper and cramming a whole cake into my mouth. Neither of
them seemed willing to argue.
