Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

This was not a conscious thought process so much as an emotional rush that got me moving.

I dragged the sodden, reeking futon over against the door and prepared to move the dresser in front of the window. Then I thought, Why? Barricading myself in this awful place wouldn't save me for long-screw that. Instead, I tipped the dresser onto the mattress and went to unlatch the window. It slid open easily, presenting a clear field of flight. Then I frowned: I'd never outrun those things. Not even my own mother. Anxiously, I started searching for a weapon, a club, anything to hold them off until I could get back to our car… and maybe away.

The maniacs were going crazy in the hall, having heard my yelp and the dresser falling over. Still looking for any kind of weapon, I opened the closet and leaned in, then reeled backward as if slapped. In the middle of a heap of women's shoes stood a green plastic garbage can, filled nearly to the brim with purplish blue human remains. Amid the offal I could make out part of a jaw, ribs, hair, intestines. But that wasn't what had made me jump.

The remains were alive.

Though every joint seemed to have been severed, the whole mass seethed like an octopus. It made wet, smacking sounds, and I had the insane impression that it was aware of me-that those veiny, glistening lumps were surging in my direction.

The bedroom door was coming apart. Moving like a sleep-walker, I closed the closet, casually crawled out the window, and dropped gently to the ground. Fresh air! Nothing was weird at all out there-it looked exactly the same as when I'd first walked up. I knew I hadn't been dreaming, but still felt self-conscious running for the road under that prosaic winter sky, as one who awakens kissing a pillow. I felt dirty.

Going through the gate, I made the mistake of looking back and caught a glimpse of herky-jerky figures emerging from the window like bats from a crevice. They were so fast. Chrome-bright panic knifed through the cobwebs, spurring me to run harder than I ever had, harder than I really could for more than a short sprint. I'd never been much of an athlete, except for diving, and that didn't require much stamina.

I came to the first crossroads and broke right, not daring my earlier shortcut. White noise began to fill my ears-the rush of blood to my head as my breathing shredded. I could taste iron. Please, God, I pleaded. I'd been avoiding backward glances, but as I ran I began to feel that perhaps the creatures were no longer after me, that they had lost interest. Lungs burning, I risked a glance and lost equilibrium, skidding, going down, skinning my hands and knees. Grit powdered my sweaty face and funneled down my dress. I hated myself.

But there was no sign of any pursuit. Heart galloping, I got to my feet and scanned the road. Nothing. Nothing but-

Movement flickered to my left, among houses and yards. I flinched, drawing a sharp breath. It was them, all three of them, coming across the lawn nearest the road and splitting up to cut me off. My mother was the closest, shamelessly charging up the center in her underwear, as rapid and jerky as a windup toy. Next was a man, a swarthy, unkempt soldier in tattered fatigues, whose face was the frozen scowl of a tiki idol. The last was a tall, limber boy who looked about my age but whose eyes were just hideous black sockets. He moved as surely as the rest.

With their blue-gray complexions, they resembled a trio of rubber-limbed Hindu deities. Where I had turned right, they had come across diagonally to intercept me, demonstrating at least an animal cunning. They weren't tired. Their loony, distorted faces showed nothing but wild obsession. Not even cruel glee-I got no impression that I was sport, just a commodity.

I doubled back, legs shaking, trying to duck the enclosing snare. The one angling to block my way was the blind boy, whose unhindered, gangly agility made me think, No fair! Tongue lolling out as he ran, he was wearing a tattered sweat suit and a gold medallion around his neck.

They had me: I was blocked and had to stop in my tracks. My only hope was the field I had cut through to get here, though I didn't feel good about running over uneven ground. Eyes stinging with sweat, I launched myself over the roadside ditch and landed, scrambling on all fours, halfway up the far embankment. I grabbed at dead stalks of last year's milkweed, but they pulled out of the loose soil like bathtub plugs, and I sprawled to the bottom.

It was all over. My legs were spaghetti, my heaving chest a box of coals. I sat upright and dug fruitlessly in the cold sand for any decent-sized stone, watching them come.

They didn't slow down the way a person would when he knows he's won, but converged on me with the same hyper-animated haste they'd shown all along. From low in the ditch, I watched first their gargoyle faces, then their torsos, then the rest come speeding at me. Covering my eyes, I whimpered, "I love you, Mum…"

Then a car hit them.

At first I only heard its engine and the snarl of its wheels churning gravel. The driver must have crept up slowly and floored it at the last minute, because I uncovered my eyes barely in time to see all three of my pouncing attackers swatted aside like chess pieces off a board. The sound was a triple impact, a mighty drum flourish-BADABOOM!-and a tinkle of headlight bits as the vehicle hammered through. Pebbles showered down on me. Immediately, the driver stood on his brakes and fishtailed to a stop. I was dimly aware of a crashing in the roadside brush, and realized that the bodies of my mother and the others were only then hitting the ground.

Spinning its tires in reverse, the car backed through the dust cloud until it came up even with me. It was Cowper's blue Expedition. From my low angle, I couldn't see the driver.

The passenger-side window powered down. "Hey, girlie! Lulu!" It was the nasal voice of Fred Cowper.

"Yeah?" I said, loath to move.

"Where are ya? You okay?"

"I think so."

"Then what you waitin' for? Get in the damn car before the bastids come back!"

I almost said, You're talking about my mother, but I didn't. I climbed painfully to my feet, peered grimly through the window at Cowper-who looked owlishly back at me through ashtray-thick prescription glasses-and yanked at the door handle. It wouldn't open.

"Unlock it," I said.

"It's unlocked," he replied impatiently. "Pull hard!"

I yanked and yanked, and shrugged at him.

"Son of a bitch!" He leaned across the seat, fumbling with the door handle, but it wouldn't budge. I could hear him muttering, "Son of a bitch bastids wrecked my car." The right front end was slightly crumpled from the collision. The door and fender were buckled together, but it didn't look that bad.

Glancing behind the car, I spied a number of people, eight of them, running toward us. Even from a distance it was very easy to tell what they were. Cowper dithered angrily, stretching his bony legs across the passenger seat to try and kick the door loose. The back was crammed with boxes, or I would have just jumped in there.

"How about the window?" I asked, fidgeting.

He ignored me, rocking the car with his futile kicks.

"How about I climb in the window?"

"Keep your shirt on," he said. Then he glanced in the mirror. "Crap. All right, get on in."

The window was not as easy as I'd hoped. It was gym class all over again. I made the mistake of climbing up one foot at a time, but it was too high, and I found myself in the awkward position of hanging from the sill by one leg and one arm, with my dress bunched up around my waist. "I can't do it!" I cried.

"Aw, for Christ's sake," he snapped, bolting from the car and hurrying around to my side. I thought he was going to try shoving me through, and had a flash of Winnie the Pooh stuck in Rabbit's hole, but he pulled me out and sent me around to scoot across from the driver's side. Doing this, I was unnerved to see that he hadn't followed, but was trying to jimmy the door loose with a pocketknife.