Geoff North - How the World Ends

Fred continued whispering soft mumblings of comfort to the woman as he led her down the dark tunnel. He looked over his shoulder and saw the dead soldier pursuing them . And he was dead, Fred realized. No human body could release that much fluid and waste—and still remain so terribly bloated—without being dead. Something else was in control of him now. He had no eyes to see with, but this something was still guiding his movement, and he was moving remarkably fast for a swollen corpse. Fred couldn’t see a thing in front of them. All he had to go on was Joanna’s word and the faded pencil scrawls of an eighty-year old map that the tunnel they were in would lead them to safety. It seemed like a short distance on paper, but travelling through the pitch black, hunched over as they were, and breathing in stale old air, made the half-mile span seem much longer. His already strained heart would likely give out long before they arrived at the tunnel’s end—if there even was one. It hadn’t been used in decades.

Corporal Stevens howled out behind them. It was an eerie, inhuman sound that seemed to be right on their backs. Fred glanced back one more time over Joanna’s shoulder and saw the soldier gaining quickly. Jets of black were spewing forward out of his eye sockets. It began spraying out of both nostrils. The sound coming out of his distended mouth was like something drowning.

We won’t make it. I’m going to have a heart attack. We’ll die of asphyxiation. Adam’s going to eat us.

Joanna’s fingers slipped out of his. Fred stumbled forward onto his knees and looked back. She was still holding the fire escape axe in her other hand. Adam was closing the gap between them. There wasn’t enough room to get a decent swing going, but the mayor of Brayburne charged towards him anyway.

Good for you, Joanna. I wish I’d voted for you.

Tommy stuck to the shadows and stayed away from the light of the raging fires that were bringing the small town down all around him. The things the dead soldiers and survivors were transforming into were rising faster than the diminishing soldiers left living. The raging corpses seemed drawn to the flames, as if something inside their bloating bodies was making them stay close to the heat. Tommy avoided the clusters of fighting. He kept moving west. Eventually he made it to the outskirts of Brayburne, collapsing into a ditch and clutching at his broken ribs. He could barely breathe. The screams from town were quietening, the gunfire less constant. Whatever had taken those people and turned them into freaks was winning. Good. Fuck them. Let the whole goddamn town burn.

He staggered back to his feet after a few minutes and started walking out into the dark. He left the highway and stumbled out into a dusty, dry field. Stay off the roads. Can’t let those things find me on the highway… Can’t let anyone see how fucked up I am.

He went another hundred yards and thought he saw something off in the gloom. Is that a car in the field? He stumbled on a little further and saw a someone standing next to it. Jesus Christ… he’s watching the town burn through fucking binoculars.

The binoculars swung Tommy’s way.

Hayden saw the man staggering along in the dirt. He focused in on the lone figure and calculated the distance. Four-hundred metres. He looks pretty fucked up. Maybe I should go help him.

A massive explosion ripped through the center of Brayburne. Hayden trained the binoculars back that way and saw an orange cloud bursting up into the sky. Must have been a gas station… maybe a big propane tank.

He hoped the flames would spread and burn all the creatures with it. They had been people minutes before, he thought grimly; soldiers, volunteers, citizens of Brayburne, and a few other thousand survivors that had found refuge in the small town. It was an awful thing to wish them all dead, but after seeing what they’d become—after seeing them stand back up and start feeding on the others being shot down—Hayden figured it would be a mercy.

Had he kept moving towards the vehicle compound, had he attempted to sneak back into Brayburne to steal a car, Hayden could very well be one of those un-dead things now.

The man in the field started yelling. Hayden swung the binoculars back his way . He knows I’m watching. He wants me to help. Hayden dropped the binoculars into the front seat of the Buick and started towards him. The man continued shouting at the top of his lungs. “Easy, guy,” Hayden muttered. “I’m coming.”

The shouting continued, and Hayden started to worry the things left in Brayburne would hear him if he didn’t shut his mouth. He looked towards town. Most of Brayburne was on fire now, and Hayden thought he could see something else as well. A black line was moving outwards from under the orange canopy of flames.

Hayden shouted back at the man still three hundred meters distant. “Keep quiet! They’ll hear you!” He waved his arms above his head, trying to signal the idiot into silence. It only made him yell louder.

Hayden hesitated fifty feet away from the car. The black line from town was growing, moving. He ran back to the Buick for the binoculars. “No. Shit, no.” The creatures in Brayburne were headed his way. They’d heard the man’s screams, and they were moving out into the field. There were hundreds of them, and they were moving fast.

Hayden tried starting the car again, but knew it wouldn’t work. The piece of junk was dead. He’d been under the hood and gone through the entire thing. He couldn’t see a thing wrong with it. The battery had plenty of juice, it turned over, but just wouldn’t catch. There was half a tank of gas inside, but it wasn’t doing him any good. At least that’s what the gauge read when he tried turning the engine over. Could the thing be out of gas? No, I couldn’t have been stupid enough to miss something as simple as that.

Hayden remembered the old Ford half-ton his father had given him for his sixteenth birthday. He always had to keep the gas tank half full, because once it hit an eighth of a tank, it would be bone dry empty. He’d been caught more than once learning that trick. Perhaps he’d been caught once again.

There were still three full canisters of gasoline sitting in the trunk. Hayden ran to the car’s back end and pulled one out. The things in the field were getting closer. His hands shook as he tried unscrewing the car’s fuel lid. He got it off and went to work on the cap of the 18-litre fuel container. Gas sloshed over his hands, stinging the cuts and abrasions on his knuckles. He screwed the attached spout in place and jammed its end into the car’s fuel tank. More gasoline leaked down the rusted fender. “Hurry! Hurry up and get inside the goddamned thing!”

The corpses were closing in. Some had split away from the main group and were running for the lone man in the field now less than a hundred meters from the Buick.

More gasoline was sloshing down the side of the car than was going inside the tank. The container was only half-emptied. Hayden looked up—they were less than fifty feet away. Fuck it. He dropped what was left and it splashed over his shoes and spilled into the dirt. As long as there was enough fuel in the tank to get him a few miles from here… if that was even the problem. He got behind the wheel and tried starting the car. The engine turned over, but wouldn’t ignite. He cranked it again and again to no effect.

The first bloated body flopped onto the hood and started raking at the windshield with its grey finger nails. Another slammed into the passenger door with enough force to rock the Buick back and forth. A third body jumped onto the trunk and scrambled up onto the roof.