Screechers

Screechers
1

My name is Susan Peterson and my husband’s name is Ralph. We’re relative newlyweds, meaning we are one month short of our one year anniversary. I guess you can call yourself a newlywed right up until that cut off point when you stop being newly anything and settle into being plain old married. But that’s fine by me. At least it would be fine if I expected us to make it to our first anniversary, let alone any subsequent landmarks of married life. It’s not our marriage that’s having trouble, that’s as solid as a rock. Ralph treats me just like I always hoped a husband would treat me. He’s gentle and kind and always finds a way to make me laugh. We don’t have children yet but that isn’t an issue either. We expected to have children, we both wanted children, we just wanted to enjoy each other for a while first. No, our marriage is fine, no doubt about that. I just don’t expect us to see our first anniversary because I’m pretty sure we’ll both be dead before that day rolls around.

Everything went to hell on the fourteenth of April. I was standing on the path outside the elementary school where I teach when it all started. Some kids were running to waiting mothers and others were running towards school buses lined up along the road. The noise of children’s playful screams and shouts filled the air. They were almost loud enough to drown out the noises coming from a little further up the street.

Almost loud enough.

I looked to see were these screeches were coming from. You couldn’t call them shouts, or even screams; they were too high pitched, the kind of noise that makes the skin crawl. I saw seven or maybe eight people running down the street. I remember thinking how odd it looked. There was a mix of men and women, some of them in business clothes, running towards the school, and all of them were screeching.

These screeches grew louder as they got closer, and when they reached the lawn in front of the school they started attacking women and children indiscriminately. At least, in the beginning I thought they were just attacking, but I soon saw that they were doing something far more horrifying.

There was a woman standing about fifteen yards in front of me, holding hands with her little boy. Two of these screeching people ran right at her and dragged her to the ground. I thought I should try and show some kind of authority, seeing as I was a teacher in this school, so I started to walk forward to break it up, to ask them just what the hell they were doing. I noticed then that these screeching people weren’t just attacking the woman; they were tearing her to pieces. I heard a rip as one of the things dug its fingers into the woman’s flesh and tore it away from her body. It was loud enough to be heard even with the sound of the woman’s screams ringing in my ears. The person that ripped the flesh away looked up at me. I recognized him. It was Stephen Murray, local carpenter and all around handyman. Only…it wasn’t him. His eyes were bloodshot and drool ran freely out of his mouth. He screeched at me before lifting the piece of flesh he had torn away and putting it to his mouth.

At first I froze. It felt like I stood still for a long time, but it must have only been two or three seconds. I heard a screech coming from my right and I turned to see one of those crazy people running right at me. I turned and ran as fast as I could, expecting whatever it was to catch up with me and drag me to the ground, but it must have found some other person closer by to distract it.

I stopped after about a hundred yards and looked back to the carnage at the school. I saw people being torn apart and blood soaking the grass and splatter across the school busses. I turned away from the gruesome scene and vomited. I thought of the children and I wanted to go back and try to help them. One of the screechers closest to me was on its knees, chewing the flesh directly off one of the bus drivers. It jerked its head around and looked up at me and the thoughts of saving any children quickly left my mind. Without thinking, I ran home, and the screams from the school followed me all the way back to the front door.

I haven’t left the apartment since.

3

As I let myself into our apartment, I could hear a mixture of hellish screeches and painful screams coming from outside, and I was sure that one of those things had followed me inside and that I would feel some bony fingers grab me and pull me back from the door. Those last few seconds when I fumbled with the key were the scariest of my life. When I finally let myself in, I slammed the door after me so hard that it rattled the frame. I then turned the lock and rested my sweaty head against the wood, breathing hard.

I heard a scream and turned towards the front window of our apartment. It looks down on Main Street, where the noise had just come from. I inched my way across the room, easing in between the couch and the coffee table and over to the window. I pressed my body against the wall, using the curtain to hide myself in case one of those things should be outside and see me looking down at it.

I leaned up to the glass and saw a struggle taking place on the pavement just below me, right in front of Bill’s Hardware Store. There was an old man on the ground and he was trying to fight off a much younger man that was kneeling on his chest. It took me a moment to recognize them. The old man was Mr. Powell, recently retired librarian, and the man on top of him was Drew Whitman…only it wasn’t really Drew Whitman any more, I suppose. He had his cop’s uniform on, but apart from that he looked just like those other screeching people I had seen at the school. As if to confirm what I suspected, Whitman let out a loud screech, before sinking his fingers into Mr. Powell’s neck. At first it looked like he was strangling him, but then I could see the blood, and after a couple of seconds the thing that used to be Drew Whitman lifted his hands away from Mr. Powell, and held up two handfuls of flesh.

I very nearly vomited again right there, only I saw something out of the corner of my eye that caught my attention. A man was running full speed towards the tangled bodies on the street below me. I recognized my husband immediately, only I wasn’t really sure if it was Ralph or if Ralph had become…well, like those others. He was carrying a steel pole in his hands, and as he got close enough to the thing that used to be Drew Whitman, he swung that pole hard and smashed Whitman’s head right in.

I turned away from the window and very nearly fainted. I just about managed to make my way to the couch and collapsed onto it. I felt myself slipping away, but a large banging on the door brought me round again. At first I was afraid to even move, let alone go anywhere near the door, but the banging continued. I knew it was Ralph, only I wasn’t sure if was really Ralph or something…well…something I didn’t even want to contemplate.

It was the voice that made me get up and open the door. I knew the minute I heard it that it was my Ralph outside.

“Susan, it’s me. Let me in!”

I pulled myself up from the couch and ran over to the door, turned the lock and let my husband in. Ralph forced me back and slammed the door shut behind him. He was breathing hard and his shirt was splattered with blood. He leaned against the door for a moment, and then stepped forward and grabbed me, pulling into him. He held me into his body and I cried freely.

After consoling me for a while, Ralph asked me to check my cell phone. The signal was dead, just like his. I watch as he checked the house phone and our internet connection. I knew from the look on his face what had happened, but I still felt a chill run down my spine when he told me that they weren’t working either.

It looked as if, for nor at least, communication had been cut off.

5

Ralph sat on the floor beside the window, constantly peering through the glass to see what was going on outside. He held his rifle across his lap and from time to time he squeezed it with both hands, his own way of releasing what little stress he could. The gun was some kind of Winchester, don’t ask me what kind because I’m useless at that kind of thing. Ralph spent some of his youth hunting with his father, and when Ralph Peterson senior passed away, ownership of the rifle passed from father to son. Unfortunately he could only find six bullets, but six were better than none.
I was about to ask Ralph what he thought we should do, but he saw I was about to speak and he held his finger up to his lips. I stayed still for a minute, afraid even to breath, while Ralph sat by the window with his head cocked, as if listening out for something.

“”Do you hear that?” he whispered.

I strained to hear but had to shake my head and admit that I couldn’t.

“Just listen,” he whispered.

I did what he asked, and at first I was frustrated at not being able to hear what he so clearly could, but then I could pick up a faint noise that seemed to be drawing nearer. I thought it sounded like an engine, and then as it grew louder, I was sure that it was an engine. I slid down from the couch and crawled over to Ralph.
We waited and listened as the noise grew louder. The street outside began to glow, as whatever vehicle was coming directed its lights down Main Street. When it sounded like the engine was right outside, we both peered out the window to see what was happening. We couldn’t see what vehicle it was, the lights were too blinding, but it lit up the street below us, allowing us to see every corpse, and every thing (I had long since stopped thinking of them as people) that was feeding on the bodies.

One of the screechers stood up and started walking towards the lights. It moved in a jerky motion, taking one step and stopping, and then taking three quick steps and stopping again. I couldn’t tell who that thing used to be, the lights were too bright, but seeing the way it moved scared me so bad that my whole body started shaking. Ralph slipped over and put his arm around me.

The thing jerked forward and stopped again. It remained motionless for what seemed to be ten minutes but was more likely ten seconds, and then it made that awful loud screeching noise and started running forward. The screeching was cut off by a loud burst of machine gun fire and the thing that was running toward the light was torn up in a blaze of bullets. Ralph took his arm from around me to punch the air, before grabbing me into him again.

“Fuckin’ A,” he cried. “The authorities are here at last.”

I don’t know if he might have continued to celebrate what seemed to be our saviors arriving just in the nick of time, because a loudspeaker burst into life and cut him off.

THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY. PLEASE REMAIN IN DOORS. THIS TOWN IS IN QUARANTINE. WE WILL PICK UP EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU IN TIME. FOR NOW, PLEASE REMAIN IN DOORS. I REPEAT, DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.

We both thanked God, let out long sighs of relief and then kissed each other, both wanting to wave out the window to show our gratitude, but resisting the urge; after all, there were still some of those things out there. I had never felt so happy, but that was soon cut short. I think I realized that the rescue wasn’t going to come when Jimmy Olson was killed.

Jimmy wasn’t one of those things. He was just a kid that had been hiding down an alleyway across the road from us and that somehow had not been pulled apart and chewed up by those monsters out there. He ran out onto the street, waving his hands towards the source of the light. I felt Ralph’s arm squeeze me tighter and could see him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

“Please,” Jimmy shouted. “I’ve got nowhere to hide. These things are fucking everywhere.”

He jogged forward a few steps towards the light and was greeted by a kind of eerie silence.

“You gotta’ help me. Take me with you.”

I watched wide eyed as the kid was greeted by more silence. I was wondering just what in the hell the army guys were doing when the loudspeaker burst back into life.

REMAIN IN DOORS. WE WILL COLLECT YOU ALL IN DUE TIME. I REPEAT, REMAIN IN DOORS.

“What the fuck do you mean in doors?” Jimmy cried. “I’ve been hiding in a fucking alley. These zombies are everywhere. You gotta’ help me.”

It was on hearing those words that I realized just what we were dealing with. The kid was right. He had just used a word to describe exactly what these things in Kentview were - zombies.

“Please help me,” Jimmy continued, and he took a few more steps towards the lights.

STAY BACK FROM THE VEHICLE

The voice on the loudspeaker seemed dreadfully cold. It didn’t sound like a voice that wanted to help us anymore.

What happened next happened very quickly. One of the zombies that was feeding on the street finally became interested in Jimmy. It stood up and lurched just a couple of steps towards the kid. Those two quick steps were enough for Jimmy. He bolted towards the lights at a full sprint, and almost simultaneously the same machine gun that we cheered a few minutes ago burst into life again; this time ripping through Jimmy’s body and leaving him a bloody mess on the ground.

I turned away from the window and put my face in my hands. Ralph sat down beside me and held me in his arms. The machine gun fire stopped and there was a moment of silence. Then the engine outside started up again, accompanied by the loudspeaker.

REMAIN INDOORS. THIS TOWN IS IN QURANTINE. YOU WILL ALL BE COLLECTED IN TIME. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES.

Ralph held me tight as I sobbed, and in the background the noise of the engine and the loudspeaker grew fainter, and the lights faded, as whatever vehicle had been there left. We haven’t seen or heard from the army since.

That was four days ago.

6

Those four days passed by excruciatingly slowly. The phone signal remained what we can only suppose is blocked by the same army that killed Jimmy Olson. The same can be said of the internet. We also had no contact with any other resident of Kentview. Everybody else was doing the same as us, I guess; laying low and hoping. We thought we might be able to pick up some news on the television or the radio, but when we tried both forms of media we were met with a useless selection of scrambled channels. We were cut off from the rest of the world; a thought equally as scary as those zombies out on the street.

As the hours and days crawled by, we ate what remained of the food in the refrigerator. Ralph was careful to ration it out, but unfortunately we are the type of couple that buy groceries daily rather than buying for the whole week, which meant that we had slim pickings. Luckily the water was still running, so we had a supply of drinking water.

Ralph kept a constant check on the situation outside from our window, and the expression on his face told me that those zombie things were still out there. Other than that, there was very little action going on.

At least until yesterday.

Bill Wrenshaw, owner of the hardware store and our downstairs neighbor, was making a run for it. We didn’t even have any idea that he was hiding out in the same building as us. He had been as quiet as a mouse. I looked down as he tried his best to race up the street towards his van. It wasn’t parked too far away, perhaps twenty or thirty feet, and a younger man might have made it. But Bill is approaching sixty and is about sixty pounds overweight.

He only made it halfway to the van when one of the zombies saw him. It screeched and ran him down fast. I would like to say that Bill got close to the van, that he almost made it. But he didn’t. The zombie dragged him down to the ground and bit into his chest releasing a spurt of dark blood that splattered the pavement.

At that point I turned away from the window; I couldn’t bear to watch a man being eaten alive. Ralph made as if he was going to get up, maybe even run outside and try to help. I put my hand on his arm and dug my nails right in to get his attention.
“Don’t you dare leave me alone.”

He didn’t reply. He just looked at me for a second and then turned back to the window. But Ralph wasn’t able to just stand by and watch our neighbor of the last year die. He opened the window and took aim with his rifle. At this point, he wasn’t thinking that those zombies might hear the noise and see where it’s coming from. I didn’t think about it either; there was too much going on and both of our brains were frazzled.

I don’t know if Ralph missed the first two shots or if two shots weren’t enough to put down and keep down the thing feeding on Bill Wrenshaw, but he fired a third time and then sat back down beside me. “I killed it, I think,” he said. “I managed to shoot it in the head.”

“And Bill?” I asked.

Ralph shook his head.

“Did any of those other things see you?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they have a lot of intelligence, Susie. They’re just like brainless savages.”

“Like zombies,” I said. “Just like Jimmy said, before the army killed him. They’re just like zombies.”

We sat in silence for a minute, and then I asked a question that had been on my mind for a while. “How many bullets do you have left?”

“Three,” my husband said.

I turned to look at him, “Maybe you should keep two..you know…for us.”

He looked at me for a long time, and then nodded.

Later that night, a screech came from outside. I asked Ralph what was happening, he told me that Bill Wrenshaw had just stood up and that he was now eating what remained of Jimmy Olson’s body.

7

Ralph must have spent the whole night trying to think of a way out of this mess, because when I woke up from the restless sleep I managed to get, he was sitting in his position at the window, eyes wide open and bloodshot, but staring right at me.

“We have to do something, Susie,” he said. “I don’t think we can just stay here and hope for the best any longer.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes with the palm on each hand.

“We’re also out of food,” he added.

He spoke the last sentence in a whisper, almost as if he knew we were condemned. He had a stern look on his face and I could see the tendons in his neck stand out as he clenched his jaw. He looked like a man that had made up his mind and no amount of arguing on my part would change it. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t at least try.

“We still have water,” I pleaded. “We’ll be okay for at least a few days. Maybe something will happen in that time.”

“Yeah…maybe,” he said. “Like maybe the army will come back and decide the best course of action is to obliterate everything in this town, both infected zombies and uninfected people alike. You saw what they did to Jimmy Olson.”

I didn’t have an argument for that, but I wasn’t about to give up already. “I’m not ready to try and make a run for it, Ralph. I’m honest to God terrified of those things out there. I don’t want to be eaten alive, for Christ’s sake.” I raised my voice a little towards the end, but out of hysterical fear rather than anger.

“You don’t have to leave, Susie,” my husband said. “At least not yet.”

I knew immediately what he had in mind, and I think that Ralph saw it in my eyes but he talked me through his plan anyway, almost as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me.

“Bill’s van is still parked down there, Susie, and the keys are lying right there on the pavement. I can see them, ready to be plucked up and used to drive right the fuck out of here.”

“Don’t you remember what happened to Bill?” I said, raising my voice more than I meant to. “He was half way eaten by one of those things and now he is one of them!”

“I know,” Ralph whispered, and his voice was calm and soothing. “I know, Susie. But I’m younger and fitter than him. I can make it.”

I started to sob and Ralph crawled over to me and held me in his arms.

“Susie, it’s our only chance,” he said, and kissed my forehead. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I whimpered.

“You won’t, Susie. I’ll get the van, drive around the block and then come back for you. I’ll drive right up to the door downstairs, right up on the fucking path. All you’ll have to do is jump on in and we’ll get out of this apartment and then figure out where to go next. I’ll blast the horn when I’m coming back around to get you. When you hear that horn you run downstairs, okay?”

I didn’t answer and Ralph put his hand to my chin and turned my face up to his.

“Susie, you understand we have to try this. It’s out best and only chance.”

I couldn’t talk, so I nodded my head once. It was all I could manage.

“Good,” Ralph said. “I’ll leave the rifle with you, okay? You remember how to fire it, right?”

Ralph had shown me once how the Winchester worked. In truth I didn’t really remember how to use it, but I was too tired for another lesson, so I nodded my head in agreement once more.

“When I come back for you, bring the rifle down to the van, okay?”

I nodded again. “When will you go?” I managed to croak.

“There’s no point in putting it off.”

“Now?”

This time it was Ralphs turn to nod his head rather than say the words out loud. I didn’t say anything, either. What was there to say? I pulled him to me and kissed him softly at first, letting my lips linger on his, and then the kiss became harder. We made love on the floor. I cried when I came and Ralph held me tight. Then it was time for him to go.

I watched him leave the apartment and close the door behind him. That was as much as I could bear to watch. I stayed away from the window, holding the rifle across my lap. I heard screeches and the sound of shoes pounding the pavement. There were a lot of noises coming from the street, but not once did I hear the noise of an engine starting up.

I tell myself that the lack of an engine doesn’t mean my husband is dead, and I refuse to even contemplate that the man I love could become one of them. But it has been several hours now, and it’s getting harder to try to remain positive.

The rifle feels awkward in my hands and I’m getting worried that the time to use it may soon be coming. I’m trying to remember what Ralph taught me that one time he took me out to the woods, using glass bottles as target practice. I don’t know whether I should put the barrel in my mouth, or hold it to my chest. I have a dreadful fear of doing it all incorrectly and ending up lying on the floor, still alive but with half my head blown off.

Of course, Ralph could still be out there, hiding and waiting for the chance to come back to me. I’m not ready to end everything just yet. I’ll wait until the last moment. But that last moment might be coming soon. I can hear footsteps coming from downstairs and it scares the hell out of me. Maybe I should position myself with the gun, just in case it is one of those things. If I’m going to be eaten, I don’t want to be alive when it happens.

I can hear something outside the apartment door now, scratching against the wood. I better get ready. I think I’ll put the gun in my mouth, there’s a better chance I’ll end everything quickly that way. I’ll wait until whatever is there comes in before I pull the trigger.

Just in case it is Ralph.

Dear God, I hope it’s Ralph.