Patrick D'Orazio - Coming the Dark

Jeff slipped quickly inside the minivan. He knew only two things for certain: it was time to leave the subdivision, and he had no desire to find out what was out there, moving so fast he could barely catch a glimpse of it.

There were plenty of abandoned cars clogging the street along with the predators following in his wake. He drove carefully to avoid both.

“Sorry folks, but I’m not on the menu tonight.” Jeff smiled and waved, staring out the window at the corpses milling about on the street and the ones climbing out of broken windows and through shattered doors of the houses along his route. There seemed to be an endless supply of them.

“It’s like I’m the freakin’ Pied Piper,” he laughed as he stared at his trail of followers in the rearview mirror.

As Jeff’s eyes moved back to the road, he slammed the brakes, coming to a sudden halt. A multi-car pileup had clogged up the entrance to the subdivision. As the van idled, he stared at the series of sedans and trucks jammed next to one other and groaned. They were not only on the street, but on the grass as well. One car had plowed into the “Welcome to Stonehill” sign out by the main road, and half of its bricks had fallen on the hood of the vehicle.

Scanning the mess, Jeff realized he wasn’t just looking at some simple twenty-car pileup. Cars in accidents didn’t line up perfectly with one another. Someone had deliberately parked them there to barricade the entrance.

“Great…just fucking great,” was all he could say as he scratched his scalp in consternation. It didn’t take much to guess that the other entrance, on the far side of the vast, sprawling neighborhood, was probably similarly blocked.

Leaning back, Jeff felt like bellowing in rage. He had a full tank of gas and nowhere to go. Somebody had decided to quarantine his neighborhood while he had hidden inside his house over the past several weeks. As he sat and fumed, he wondered whether it had been done by someone trying to keep the infected out…or in.

Listening as the crowd got closer, he reflected on his situation. His family was dead, and his house was a pile of ashes. He had barely made a dent in the rabid population with his little fireworks display, and all he had to defend himself was a baseball bat and a pistol about as impressive as a water gun. To top it all off, there was a huge entourage of rotting bodies following him, ready to tear him limb from limb the moment he stepped back outside the van.

Jeff’s eyes narrowed as he latched on to an idea. Slowly, he leaned forward in the driver’s seat and looked outside. His eyes darted from the rearview to the side-view mirror. As he watched the arduously slow crowd continue to draw closer, he shook his head and laughed.

“Holy shit, I am the Pied Piper!” he exclaimed, grabbing the steering wheel and hitting the gas. Turning, he headed back inside the subdivision.

After more than a minute of slow driving and watching more and more of the foul-smelling maniacs fall in behind, Jeff allowed a smile to claim his face, and there was a gleam in his eyes.

“You’ve totally lost your mind, Mr. Blaine.”

The words were filled with self-doubt but also an undertone of awe. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but he felt a rush from the freedom his actions were giving him. He had been a prisoner for so long it felt great to do something so completely irrational. He took a deep breath, and the air felt clean and crisp in his lungs.

A few minutes later, after several U-turns, Jeff had rounded up a crowd rivaling the one that had entered his house. He gunned the engine and watched as the loose group of bodies grew smaller in the rearview mirror.

Moments later, he hit the end of one of the streets in his neighborhood. He was at the bottom of a hill, and the crowd following was at the top. He could not see them anymore, but he knew they were still coming. The idle of the engine kept the sound of their screams and moans at bay for the moment.

Jeff turned off the ignition. He pushed his door open, grabbing the keys out of force of habit. Stepping onto the asphalt, he looked up the hill, then ducked back into the van to grab his baseball bat.

The houses surrounding the intersection were no different than the ones on his street, with plenty of shattered windows and smashed doors. There were no infected nearby, but there was plenty of evidence of their handiwork. A few corpses, half-eaten, littered both the yards and the street. Bat firmly in hand, Jeff climbed to the top of the van.

He was almost hypnotized by the distant noises of the crowd. When they were this far off, it wasn’t such a fearful thing, just the distant rumble of thunder lazily threatening to roll in.

As he waited for the crowd to appear, he barely registered the sound of a garage door opening behind him. At the same instant, the first of the infected crested the hill.

Jeff tensed and swung around when he heard the faint noise, fearing he had missed one of the ghouls in his cursory search.

“Hello?”

A woman stood underneath a raised garage door, staring at him. Jeff blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend the fact that she had just spoken. The infected didn’t speak.

He reached up to shield his eyes from the sun, thinking that she might very well be a mirage. When she waved feebly at him, he blinked several more times, not quite able to come to grips with the fact that she seemed very real.

“Hello?” she repeated. The voice was timid but louder now. It was raspy, as if it had not been used in a long time.

Jeff jumped down from the van and moved toward the woman. The shock of hearing someone else speak had already passed. The words were barely audible, but the voice stood out like a pure note of music in a world filled with static. She looked tiny from a distance, but he suspected his perception wouldn’t change much as he got closer. She was emaciated, the bones in her face and arms prominent.

As he drew nearer, she took a few tentative steps back until he slowed, shaking his head and raising his hand in what he hoped looked like a peaceful gesture. It must have worked, because she stopped retreating, a curious look on her face.

He picked up speed again, hoping she understood the need for urgency as he took a quick glance at the hill. When he looked back toward her, he saw that she had not fled deeper into the garage, which gave him a boost of confidence. As he came within a few feet, he gave her a closer look.

Perhaps she had been attractive once, but she now looked barely better than the creatures crawling down the hill behind them. Her hair had probably been cut in a bob, but it was hard to tell, since the dark locks were matted and stuck out in various directions from her head, like antennae. Her skin was tight on her bones, and her olive coloring had turned the tint of spoiled milk. Her lips were cracked and dried, and her arms and hands had no meat on them. Her clothes hung off her small frame, and Jeff knew he would be able to count each one of her ribs with ease if her torso were visible.

“They’re coming.”

Her voice took on a sudden firmness. She was looking past him, up the hill, just as he had a moment before. The haunted look in her eyes sent a chill down his spine.

“I know,” Jeff acknowledged as he too glanced at the encroaching doom. “We have to get out of here.” He tried to break into a smile, but faltered. “I can’t believe someone else is alive.”

He did his best to make his voice calm and soothing. The woman’s gaze snapped away from the crowd, and she looked him in the eyes. She appeared to be confused, terrified, and unsure what to make of Jeff.

He extended his hand slowly. She looked down at it, examining the dirt that ran in lines along his palm. “My name’s Jeff.” Her eyes darted to his face and then back down to his hand. “We have to go. Now.”