Chapter 1:
August
+12:00
“No! Henry! We can’t leave Henry!”
August grabbed on to his mother’s sleeve. His mother kicked him off. He stumbled to the ground. She stared at him with wide eyes. Her eyebrows trembled.
“Run! August, run!”
August pushed himself up on his knees. He glanced behind him. At henry.
August’s dog. His best friend. It couldn’t be.
He couldn’t be eaten alive by zombies.
The people, they were once people, they pushed their
fingernails into Henry’s flesh, which quivered underneath and came up soft and
warm for their blackened teeth to bite.
Blood spurted from torn arteries.
Bits of offal dropped to the ground.
August put his hands over his ears.
“No, no, mommy,” he
lifted up his head to the sky, “Henry!”
A zombie twisted its head around to peer at August. Its eyes bulged. It moaned and dropped the piece of dog flesh
that hung between its fingers. Flesh
showed between its teeth. It stumbled up
onto two feet and lurched down the little suburban street towards August.
August reached towards the monster.
“Please, Mr. Teniis, you don’t want to eat Henry, he doesn’t
taste very good, see—“
Arms wrapped around August’s stomach. From behind.
The Mr. Teniis zombie glanced up above August’s head. It broke into a run. It screamed.
Other zombies joined the chase.
The arms lifted August up into the air. He landed on his father’s shoulders, which
smelled of aftershave, and of bloody sweat.
A thick bite mark pulsed on his father’s neck, in front of August’s
nose. August turned his head away.
His father sprinted past his mother, who stumbled down the
street with her arms in front of her.
Father gripped Mother’s sleeve and yanked her along. August craned his neck to look back at
Henry. A heavy hand pushed his head back
down. Into the bite mark. Blood covered the tip of his nose. Father sucked in air through his teeth and
continued to run. The zombies got father
away. The did not move fast. Sometimes they fell over, and then got back
up again. The suburban landscape
scrolled by. They passed underneath a
big sign, lettered in all capitols.
Welcome to Innerston,
Indiana.
Population-12,987
Dog Trot Capitol of
the world.
Father yanked August’s head down so that he couldn’t see the
sign anymore. They passed
underneath. Zombies stood around in
front of them. They caught sight of
Father and Mother and ran forwards with their arms out and their mouths open. Father dodged past groping arms. Black fingernails brushed against August’s
leg. August shivered.
Mother jerked Father to the side.
“There! There are
people in there! Look at the boards!”
Father pulled away.
“No! They’ll kill
us! They’ll kill our son! They know I’m—“
Mother slapped Father, hard.
Her fingernails scraped August’s face.
“Get the hell over here!”
Father slumped. He
followed Mother up to the door of a boarded up house with big white wood
columns. A curious face poked through
the cracks. A gun followed.
“Who are you? What do
you want?”
Mother broke down.
She slammed at the door.
“Let us in! Let us
in, please!”
Zombies closed in all around. They crashed through doors across the
street. They climbed out of cars parked
along the side of the road.
The welcome sign fluttered in the wind against a loose
nail.
The curious face popped back into the house. The door clicked. It flung open. A plump lady with a shotgun in her arms
ushered Mother and Father in.
“Come! Come! We don’t want to leave anyone behind, that’s
just unchristian!”
Mother collapsed past the doorway.
“Everything is unchristian, nowadays.”
The plump lady slammed the door shut behind Father and
locked it tight, then placed a board across it.
“Tell me about it, hon.”
She glanced at Father.
“What’s the little guy’s name?”
Father dropped August down on a plump red couch. A little girl about his age scampered to make
room. A family of black people huddled
in one corner. An old man peered down
from upstairs.
Fists rattled the boarded up windows. Father slumped down on the couch beside
August.
“His name’s August.
My name is Winston.” He jammed
his thumb in mother’s direction.
“Her name’s Janis.”
The plump lady laid her gun down beside the door. She wiped her hands together.
“My name’s Christie.”
She waved at the black family.
“These are the Applinesons.”
The father of the family gave a curt nod. Two little boys hid behind his legs. The plump lady motioned to the little girl
beside August.
“We don’t know her name, or who she belongs to. She won’t talk.” She motioned upstairs, at the old man. “That’s George. He fought in Vietnam, the gun and house are
his.”
George climbed down the stairs. He tapped a cane in front of him. He stooped over. He stopped at the midway landing.
“Welcome. I have food
enough for everybody, at least for a while.
You can get comfortable.”
The black family shuffled.
The little girl beside August pressed her face into a pillow.
A rotten arm smashed through a window and jammed against a
board. Teeth showed through the gap. Christie jerked the gun up from its place by
the wall and pushed it through the gap.
She pulled the trigger.
Boom!
August slammed his hands to his ears. They rang.
Gunpowder smell filled the room.
The little girl beside August cried out into her pillow. Christie loaded another shell into the gun
with a satisfied click.
The sound of the zombies grew louder. More arms broke through the windows. On the stairs, the old man gave his head a
slow shake. Christie raised her gun
up.
Father leapt off the couch and muscled her aside. He ripped the gun out of her hands.
“Pardon me for my rudeness, but that was a dammed stupid
thing to do.” He took the gun and
protected it with his arms.
Christie shrunk towards the wall. Zombie faces pushed through the boards in the
windows.
Mother pushed herself up from the floor and straddled
Father’s waist. She pulled him away from
Christie.
“Winston, no, don’t be—“
Father tripped on a piece of wood. The gun in his arms slipped down. His finger yanked on the trigger. The barrel pointed straight at Christie’s
head.
Boom!
August squinted his eyes closed. The little girl beside him screamed. The black family huddled closer
together.
The old man sputtered.
He held his hand to his chest.
The beams that he leaned on cracked.
His body thumped to the floor. A
vase spilled. Water seeped into the
bottom of the wallpaper.
The black father rushed towards the fallen old man.
“Heart attack! He’s
had a heart attack!”
A zombie pushed its whole torso through a window near the
door. It rasped. Its arms grappled with the wall. They gripped Mother’s hair. Mother slammed against the wall. The zombie sank its teeth into her neck. She didn’t scream. Her eyes closed and she fell limp. Father roared. He brought the gun around and fired it.
Boom!
The bullet went wild.
It split off half of Mother’s face, then dislodged most of the boards
that protected the window she pressed against.
The zombies pulled her through.
Father glance around himself with a crazed fire in his eyes. He put the shotgun to his feet. He put the barrel in his mouth.
Click.
Father’s eyes snapped open.
He looked around the room in a rage.
He took the gun up in his arms, stock raised high. He jumped through the open window. His shirt caught on a broken piece of
glass. He lodged in the space. Zombies tore at his head and shoulders. He screamed.
A zombie burst from a door on the second floor and toppled
down onto the black man and the dead old man.
The black man collapsed under the weight. He screamed.
His family sobbed.
August’s mind kicked into action. His body moved without thought. He grabbed the arm of the little girl beside
him. He yanked her off the couch and
through the center of the room. His
sneakers tracked in blood and bits of grey matter. He found the back door and unlocked it. No zombies bashed at it from the other
side.
The remainder of the black family stared at August and the
girl. August stared at them back. He forgot how to speak. He turned to the door and swiped it
open. He jumped through. He dragged the little girl outside. A treehouse ladder ran up the side of a big
elm tree in the corner of the yard.
August ran towards it. He gripped
the first wooden rung. He yanked on the girl’s
hand.
“Come on!”
The girl stared at August with huge eyes.
August tried to pick her up.
His arms wouldn’t.
The girl rubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. She set forth with a determined look. She gripped the first rung next to
August. They climbed.
Screams erupted from the house below. One of the black family’s children ran out
into the yard. A zombie lurched out
behind him—his father. The boy turned to
the zombie and began to plead. The
zombie topple onto the boy and took a bite out of his neck.
August’s body kicked him with adrenaline. He made it to the trapdoor to the treehouse
and pushed it up. He climbed in. He looked around. Brown boxes surrounded him. A gun leaned in the corner, another on a
table underneath a window. Stacks of
bottle water stood underneath another wall.
The girl climbed in behind him. She pulled the trapdoor into place behind
herself. She leaned against a wall and
buried her face in her hands. August sat
down and stared at her.
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