Part II: Pulp Fiction Stories
“Tim, do you experience the feeling amusement?” the little Asian man asked looking incredulous.
“Jim, my names Jim. ” The man responded “Stop calling me Tim. I’ll find it amusing if you get one of those chompers biting your ass.” he said angrily. “What do you mean do I experience the feeling amusement, absolutely not — this is the opposite of amusing.”
Jim started calling the little man Shortround because, he reminded Jim of that character Shortround from Indiana Jones. and the Temple of Doom. He was the only person Jim ran into that wasn’t eyeing him up like he was a big pork chop, so he let him tag along. Jim regretted it however, as the one thing the little guy kept doing was making too much noise.
Jim looked out the crack in the wall of the old garage and he could see that the streets were swarmed with those things. They seemed to have acute hearing and could hear the slightest of noises. If one hears or sees something it lets out this god-awful guttural roar and then anything within hearing distance will swarm the target.
These things don’t need weapons, technology, knives. guns, or stabbing weapons. They overwhelm you with their sheer numbers. You can’t possibly shoot them fast enough to stop them from overwhelming you. Jim watched a lady unload a clip into her husband about two hours before, and the husband still ended up feasting on her.
He thought to himself, it must be some type of fever that cranks up your adrenalin because the speed and power these things have after they have been infected is incredible. The radio says to stay home and lock your doors and windows, keep all the lights off, stay in the basement or on the upper floor if you can. Make no noise and make no light unless you can keep the radiant light 100% contained from view.
In essence people are supposed to stay home and hide in a closet until things get cleaned up. From what Jim could see there was nothing ever going to clean up this mess. Staying in the City was going to be suicide. They are multiplying so fast that Jim wondered if there was going to be a city left at the end of the week.
When these things find a target, they will rush them at an incredible speed. When they arrive, they pounce and grab onto you in any way that they can and after that first bite regardless of if you get away, you’ve got a 5 minute horrifically painful slow death to go through which is followed by a period of rapid seizure and then the reanimation of your body.
People started using the word zombie but that isn’t what these things are. They still are technically alive because they will die from gunshots, they will die if you run them long enough. It’s like their bodies are running at an extreme feverish temperature to begin with so when you get them into a full out sprint their temperature goes so high that it fries their brain, or they have a stroke or something.
Jim isn’t sure what actually kills them but, he had a dozen of them chase him in his hot rod where he kept having to slow down for obstacles. They stayed on his tail for about 4 blocks and then the first one just collapsed and started seizing. Then shortly after the other ones followed suit.
At first he thought it was a sniper taking them out but then later he had heard on the radio that these things were known to overheat and have some type of a death seizure. So, he assumed that it was from over running and the heat just killed them.
It was comforting to know that they were susceptible to mortal injury. At first it seemed as though they were bionic and there was no stopping them. It’s as though they feel no pain but their injuries will still kill them. That is, you can unload a clip into them and they will still kill you but they too will die shortly after from their injuries.
That mortality was the only chance for humanity as near as he could tell. The ease of transmission and the near instant conversion into a lethal killing machine made these things the greatest hazard to humanity that ever existed. Their mortality and their seeming loss of intelligence are the saving graces for people.
Shortround knocked over a can of WD-40 as he squirmed to see out the small crack in the lower portion of the wall. ‘Watchyou see?’ he says to Jim.
Jim moved his hand down low signalling for him to be quiet and he squirmed in closer to see kicking over a bottle which made a loud clanking noise in the garage.
Jim looked down menacingly where Shortround said ‘Sorry Tim’.
A loud thud against the small garage door in the back. Jim’s eyes darted around looking for his exit strategy. The worst thing in the world will be to go into a defense. That will be a quick and certain death.
‘What do we do?’ said Shortround.
Another large thud on the door and it visibly showed a crack from having major structural failure. Jim knew that it would only take another hit or two and those things would be inside.
Quickly calculating the odds of survival Jim decided he knew what to do. He ran towards the wall and jumped up against it with one foot gripping on a small 2 x4 rail on the wall which he then pushed off against, giving him the height he needed to reach the roof trusses on the inside of the garage.
He quickly rolled over onto the ply wood that was being stored up there and sat silently.
Shortround called out to Jim to help him up.
Jim sat silently not moving an inch.
Thud
The door gave away and those things poured in. Short round screamed to Jim for help and Jim just plugged his ears and looked up at the top of the ceiling trying to filter out as much noise as he possibly could.
He could still hear the liquid sounds of the flesh being pulled off the little man. His screams lasted only a few seconds so they must have gotten to his throat quickly but the gurgling sound of the flesh being ripped away from the bone as he gasped his last breaths was an unrelenting sound as they consumed him with large gulping and slurping sounds. It was enough to make Jim nearly vomit.
He knew if he did he was a dead man. His only shot was to lay completely silent and wait for them to finish Shortround off and then try to sneak out later that night when they wander off to their next kill.
Jim didn’t feel bad.
It was Shortrounds fault that they heard them — the stupid little bastard was doomed anyway. There is no way someone like that would ever make it out of this city. He’s too loud, too clumsy, too dumb, and too weak to make it past day three and he most certainly did not.
The watery sound of his skin being gnawed on by those things was unbearable. It was like raw liver bloody over little morsels of meat that stretched out like a rubber chicken and snapped back like an elastic with each bite. Jim just kept dissociating and disconnecting his mind from the situation.
He laid there all day with his mind just lost in space. Just floating in numbness waiting for the buffet to be over. Time seemed to pass without him realizing and the next thing he knew it was pitch black in there. He knew he would have to make is move now if he was going to get out of there. He slowly sat up and listened for any sound. Nothing. It was completely quiet.
It was so black in there he figured he would wait until dawn started to break so he could at least assess if there was any danger at all waiting for him down there.
So, he would continue to wait…
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