I’m bleeding. The warm streams of my life ran down the cold flesh of my useless arm. When the bullet exploded in my shoulder, the whole limb went numb. I could barely move it now. I had done what I could to patch it up, but there isn’t much you can do while you’re running for your life; and they can smell blood.
They’ll follow a trail of blood just about forever.
There were two of them now, dark figures in the shadows. I had boarded myself up in an old Buick at the dump. There they were, shambling around old tires and the rusted skeletons of forgotten wrecks, shambling along the crimson trail I’d left.
The men with the guns wanted to play, I think. They could have killed me then and there, or fired a warning shot. No, I don’t think they missed. I could hear them laughing from their hidden crow’s nest.
One of the shambling things was at the window, its pale, blind eyes peering intently into my dark, frightened spheres. Lifeless, there was nothing in that gaze, no soul, just hunger, emptiness.
It wasn’t fresh. Decay had eaten up most of its face. Skeletal, there was no nose, just two slits; a low mist hung in the air, and I could see thin wisps of fog slowly streaming into them. Then, the white tendrils suddenly rushed out, billowing under its chin.
I had been holding my breath the whole time, and I emptied my lungs out as it exhaled. The thin glass between us fogged over, and that horrible face was obscured by a white frost.
I could bleed out here, die quietly, I thought. Just go to sleep. Or I could try to stop the bleeding. The window was clearing up, and I could see the thing’s waiting, expressionless face. I didn’t dare move, dare make any sound.
There were others now, surrounding the car, their faces all pale, all in various stages of weathering, all blind, all sniffing…
And listening, I knew. It was like sitting on crates of dynamite with a lit cigar. Any moment, and they would explode, break in the glass, tear me limb from limb.
Or I could fight. A last stand? I stared at my arm. It was turning black. No use. I smiled. I stared at myself in the dirty, rearview mirror. I was getting giddy. Blood loss, I knew, but it all seemed so funny. It was all so absolutely hopeless.
My eyes returned to the first zombie with the skeletal face. I wondered who it had been, how the man had died. Had he known it was coming? Or was he taken by surprise. It looked old, old enough, maybe, to be one of the first turned, one of the first in that wild pandemonium when the dead first walked the earth.
Its clouded eyes never blinked, but the pale pupils roamed, moving randomly as the infected brains sent out wild, meaningless signals. There was a strange pull I felt to follow its gaze. You’d do that with a real person, a living person. You’d see a stranger’s eyes move suddenly, and, you can’t help it, you look to see what caught his attention.
Even though I knew it was blind, knew that its shifting eyes didn’t mean anything, some part of me felt that same, sympathetic pull. Men were sheep, after all. We yawn when others yawn, are afraid when others are afraid. As I watched this demon’s face, some part of me, one of those automatic parts we can’t control, felt as though I was looking at another man, another aspect of humanity, the Imago Dei.
Are zombies made in the image of God too? I wondered.
As I rolled the thought over in my mind, feeling a drifting sleepiness coming over me, I concentrated my gaze upon the deathlike face. Memento mori, I told myself.
All at once, the face was gone. The black puss of its brains exploded, covering my window. The loud crack of the gunshot shocked me out of the doldrums of my slow death. There were more. All around me, like fireworks, a hailstorm of bullets fell. Some hit the car, whizzing through the driver’s compartment like supersonic insects. Most hit their targets. All around the car, the dead died.
I felt cold. Shivers wracked my body. A voice, distant. Men shouting. It was getting hard to breathe. I couldn’t see out the windows for the splatter of zombies. Were there more out there still? Had the men who’d shot me come to finish me off? Come to play more games?
I fumbled with the lock, my hand shaking. With the last of my waning strength, I shoved open the rusted door.
Tale Told 