I could only hear the groans of the building. Whatever those things were they had given up trying to get to me. It had been four days. Four days of them pounding on the doors, hitting the walls, crawling over each of the boarded up windows but I had stuck it out. I guess that’s why the rest of the town had emptied out. They couldn’t handle it. I’ll admit there were times I almost opened the front door too, if for nothing else than to end the noise.
Nat had called them zombies but I don’t know if that was right. Zombies looked like decaying corpses right? These were different. They were dead, but not dead. Like something else was riding them. Some were bleeding, yeah, but they never seemed to stop. Just an endless spout of blood trailing in the streets.
That had been the first sign when we came into town, the streaks of blood. Nat, Otto, and me had come back from the campsite over on Dayton Point. We’d only been gone a week but the radio had stopped picking up signals not long after we got to the camp. Otto said it was the ridges but they had never blocked the signal before. We had to deal with seven days of DJ Nat on his god forsaken Apple. But the signal didn’t come back after we left the park. Didn’t see another vehicle either until we got near town and all of those were abandoned. Then we saw the streaks.
It looked like Mah Kali. I still think it had been her, at least before it became that. It was walking along the streets near the cinema, bare naked but covered in lesions. Otto had hooted at the nude flesh but screamed when he saw the blood pouring from her legs. We stopped, thinking the woman had been injured. She might have been but help isn’t what she wanted from us.
She killed Otto. It was so fast. He jumped from the truck and ran to her, touching her shoulder to halt her walking. She spun on him and sank her teeth into his neck before we had even got out of the truck. Nat said she had fangs, but I didn’t see them. I just pull my rifle and opened up on her. On it. Didn’t matter. It screamed at us and ran on all fours away, grabbing the side of the cinema’s building and hoisting itself over the roof.
Otto didn’t have a chance. Nat had checked him while I chased that thing off.
“She bit his head off,” he had said. Near as I could tell, he was right. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the police,” I said. I had pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911 but there was never a ring. Just a hiss that seemed to be getting louder.
“Paul?” Nat said.
“Hold on. Trying to figure out what the heck is going on with this thing.”
“Paulie!” Nat said, slapping my arm.
“What?” I said and looked up. He pointed to the cinema’s roof and I felt cold streak down to my jewels.
Whatever that thing was that looked like Mah Kali, there was more of it. I don’t mean more people that were injured and stripped like her. I mean her. There were at least seven of them, all looking like seventy-year-old ladies out of their skivvies with strong as a buck looking muscles bulging from their arms. Some were missing large sections of skin but they didn’t seem to mind. They looked at us with a hunger no living thing should have. I’ve been stalked by a cougar before. I’d rather have a pack of those staring at me than whatever these things were.
We ran. We ran as hard and as fast as we could. I don’t know if they got Nat. So many buildings were boarded up, I just looked for the first one I could find that had a front door that wasn’t blocked. That’s how I ended up in this place. They had found me quick enough, and started in on every door and window. I didn’t check the name on the outside but whoever the home belonged to had boarded her up quite well. I was safe, thankful for that, for now.
Four days later and they stopped banging. My phone still isn’t working but it’s still charged. Shouldn’t be. Normally I’d hook it to the flashlight crank back in my truck but it’s still kicking nearly a week since it’s last charge. Power in the house still working too, and there’s food. Waters an issue though. There was a full tub of tap water, but now anything coming through the pipes is black as tar. I don’t want to risk it.
I don’t know what to do. I can stay here till the water or food runs out, and then dehydrate or starve to death. Or I can leave. Maybe try to get back to my truck and drive out of here. I wish I knew if Nat was alive but part of me knows he isn’t. Part of me wishes I wasn’t either.
Maybe that’s why I’m stood in front of this door. Cause I want to die. Cause I’m gonna risk a run. I think I knew where I was in town, and that I could find my truck. I just had to hope those women didn’t find me first.
Today’s story is a bit inspired by concepts of stories like Silent Hill, Night of the Living Dead, and other horror pieces like that. I don’t particularly care for writing about “normal” zombies only because those have been done to death (pun intended). But I do dig the weird style of undead you get in things like Silent Hill or other horror games where the dead don’t follow a set of rules. Instead supernatural or psychotic themes play over the monsters. Something about that makes them seem more terrifying than just the dead rising and hunting the living, because when you know something just wants to kill you can almost understand the thinking of such a monster. When you don’t know what it wants, or how it plans on getting it, that fear of the unknown is far more terrifying.