Page 33 of Dating After the End of the World
“Push It, Pearson!” The words snap me back to reality, punctuated by a gunshot, a bullet whizzing over my body. I hear flesh being torn apart as thick, black liquid splatters all around me, creating a pit of tar. The corpse of a biter collapses onto me, pinning my body to the ground, its deadweight slumped across my torso. Its stench fills my nostrils, coating my insides. Maggots crawl through the decayed tissue, feeding off open sores and pustules. I turn my head and spew vomit, unable to hold the contents of my stomach in.
Suddenly, the biter rises, rearing back, its mouth wide open, ready to bite. But then it’s pulled off and tossed to the side. My father stands over me, urgency written all over his face. He reaches down, grabs a fistful of my sweater, and yanks me onto my feet.
“We need to move!” Dad grips my arm, dragging me from the fence line, our feet pounding into the earth as we run for our lives.
As we sprint toward the house, Greg emerges from inside, charging at full speed with a sword in hand. When we’re at a safe distance, I turn and watch my uncle Jimmy and aunt Julie standing side by side, firing at the biters. My uncle is calm, taking care to aim his rifle at the head or spinal column. Each shot is followed by a biter stopping dead in its tracks. My aunt does the same with her pistol, calmly unloading rounds into the wall of rotting flesh moving toward us like a dark stormfront.
Tessa emerges and runs into the action with a .22 caliber pistol in her hand. She isn’t as practiced and begins firing wildly. Tessa’s mom, Meredith; Molly; and Elaine stay at a distance, armed with machetes and knives, guarding the interior of the property as a last resort. One that will prove useless if it actually comes to that.
I feel the heft of the gun in my hand. It begs to be used, not for its own sake, but for everyone around me. I pull the other pistol from my ankle holster and fall back in line to fight. Looking down the sight of my gun, I aim at a biter and what’s left of its face. Only a few patches of hair remain in random spots on its head. Its eyes are fogged over, and its teeth are cracked and rotten. Its face increases in size as it moves toward me, filling more of the area around the sight.
I pull the trigger and a shot rings out, popping my eardrum as the bullet rips through the biter’s nose, caving it in and blowing out the back of its skull. I’ve seen bullet wounds in the hospital plenty of times, but this is different. The skin is weak and the bone is so brittle, allowing the velocity of the bullet to rip right through it like it was made of paper.
They just keep coming, and we keep firing, pausing only to reload. A group of biters charges toward me in a triangle formation, one at the front while the others push and jockey to get ahead, wanting to be first to rip into the standing meals all around them. I fire into the front biter’s kneecap, slicing its leg in two, the lower stump planting into the ground and staying put while its body continues advancing. Thebiter ignores the pain, if they can even feel pain, and continues rushing forward with its right leg. As it swings the thigh of its left leg, it topples to the earth, somersaulting thanks to its momentum suddenly giving out. The biters behind it trip over the grounded body and a pileup forms, allowing me and my dad to run over and take out seven biters, execution-style. The heat from our pistol barrels sears the rotting flesh before we even pull the trigger. Buckets of black sludge and bone geyser up out of the mound, covering us from head to toe.
“There’s too many!” my uncle shouts.
Aunt Julie empties her clip and searches her pockets for more ammo. A biter closes in on her, and she screams just as its head is severed from its body. Greg stands over the corpse with his sword raised, covering for his mom as she retreats. He plunges the blade into the face of every biter that nears him, like a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole. I raise my gun, aim, and pull the trigger, but it clicks instead of firing off a round.Shit. It’s empty.
I glance around, searching for my dad. I want to ask him what to do. I need his guidance, but he’s nowhere to be seen. My heart clenches up as I look across the field of bodies, wondering whether one of them might be his. There’re too many of them, and we’re out of ammo.
“Fall back!” I shout.
We race toward the porch, regrouping in front of it. Aunt Julie tells us she’s going to get more ammo, and she sprints around the dummy house toward the main one. Elaine, Molly, and Meredith take off with her.
There are more than two dozen biters still advancing toward us. A couple of swords, knives, and ten throwing stars stand between them and us becoming their next meal.
“If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die fighting,” I say, looking down the line at my aunt, uncle, and cousin and then at the wall of approaching biters. Death creeps up to the front of the house like a shadow growing with the setting sun.
Suddenly, the front door of the dummy house bursts open, splinters of wood flying from the frame. My father charges down the front steps.A massive gun the size of my leg with a drum magazine is pressed against his hip, the weight of it straining the muscles in his arms. He plants his feet in the grass and flicks the safety to full auto.
A small whir charges up, and in a flash, a hail of bullets rings out so quickly, it looks like the gun is on fire. All of us hit the deck, covering our ears.
The sound is relentless. Like the loudest chain saw you could ever imagine, buzzing out in anger as brass shells pour out of the side of the gun like a waterfall, fifty rounds per second, cascading into a growing mountain on the lawn. I look up to a firework show of carnage. Blacks and reds and greens and yellows, bursting into the air. Bodies shred to pieces. Legs, arms, guts, and heads ricochet around, dancing in the air and landing like confetti strewn to the wind.
I spot a truck driving on the road, heading into the line of fire. “Dad, stop shooting!” I yell.
He doesn’t hear me, though, so I jump to my feet and grab his shoulder, startling him. The gunshots cease just as the truck pulls up. Two biters are still standing, continuing to make their way toward us. The brakes squeal as the vehicle slides to a stop.
Blake jumps out and leaps over the collapsed fence. With a machete in hand, he sprints toward the final two biters, ready to swing. My shoes kick up black sludge and wet soil as I race to beat him to the kill. He’s closer to them than I am, but I have my throwing stars and something to prove. I’m not going to let him show up like some sort of action hero and get all the glory.
I pull two stars from my pouch, and when I’m sure I have the two biters dialed in at the right range, I let loose one and then the other. Just as Blake’s about to bring his machete down into the skull of a biter, my first throwing star pierces its eye. The retina pops like a water balloon being tossed onto concrete, milliseconds before metal crunches through bone. Blake’s arm hangs in the air, the machete held high but unmoving as he watches the two biters in front of him slink to the ground, lifeless and unmoving.
Chapter 16
“What the hell happened here?” Blake asks no one in particular while he surveys the carnage.
“I don’t know,” my dad answers, looking around as if the answer might come to him.
But there’s no reason for any of this. It doesn’t make any sense. Where did they come from, and why are there so many?
“Well ... sucks that I missed out on all the action,” Blake jests, holding his arms out at his sides like a gladiator entering an arena.
When no one responds, his face slowly morphs to mirror ours, a mix of fear and pain.
“Did I miss something?” He tilts his head.
“Chris ... he ...” I stop, unsure of how to share what I witnessed. “He shot himself ... after he got bit trying to buy time for his sons to run away.”
