Those Days Gone By

July 4th 2012

Words 799

Those days were gone.  Terry perched on the unstable beams of a burnt out garage and watched the things below gouge and tear at the remains of the rotting body in the blue convertible. There’d been a time when the guilt she felt after slowing down on the highway to gawk at a car wreck bothered her. 

She remembered what it was like back when life was normal, it made her sick to even consider the present state of things being the new definition of normal.  This was temporary madness, no one could be blamed or held accountable for things they did now that would not have been tolerated back then.  Those car accidents she used to drive by, pretending not to be interested in what was on the side of the road when really all she’d been interested in was what she could see out of the corner of her eye, what was she hoping to see?  She could lie to herself and say she was just trying to reassure herself that everyone was alright, but there was a lot more to it than just that.  There were always a whole parade of vehicles around her slowing down and staring at the exact same thing.  Is it someone I know?  Is there blood?  Did someone die? 

She remembered driving by fireworks with less interest than she would a really gruesome car accident. 

What did that say about her? 

If it was the gore she had been looking for, there was certainly a whole lot of it to look at these days. 

The news reports of riots in New York and Boston hadn’t seemed important until she saw one of those things for herself.  She hadn’t even realised it was related to those distant reports at first.

Her neighbor was laying face first in the swimming hole.  It looked like she'd been stabbed or something, the water was coloured red from all the blood.  Emergency numbers were all busy, though Terry didn't think an ambulance was going to do much for the poor woman once they did arrive.  There was no way she could still be alive in there, floating with her head down and blood all around her.  It was obviously too late to save the poor woman, but at least the police might catch who did that to her. 

Then the body moved. 

At first Terry thought it was a current from the water pump, but then the body moved again.  That was no current.  The entire body shuddered, the back extended unnaturally as the legs and arms began to twitch.  It rolled over at the same time the oven timer from inside the house started to beep. 

A burnt apple pie was the least of her worries though, and Terry could not tear her eyes away from the thing in the water, twitching and grasping its way to the edge as it moved in a grotesque parody of swimming. 

It was the most horrific and disturbing thing she had ever seen in her life. 

At least up to that moment. 

It was a moment Terry would always remember.  One of those, where were you when it happened kind of things.  Everyone knows where they were when JFK got assassinated.  Everyone knows where they were when they first heard about the 911 attack. 

Everyone who survived the outbreak would remember the first zombie they saw. 

Everyone responded to the threat differently. 

Terry turned on the news and watched with new understanding that the reports were much more than just fans over reacting to their favorite football team losing in the play offs.  The news caster read the declaration of martial law issued by the government in between commercials for Viagra and hot dogs.  She watched the special report on the time line of the outbreak.  How it had been suspected at first that the isolated incidences of violence and cannibalism had been linked to a new illegal drug. 

The next day the TV stations were dead and the day after that the power went out. 

In hindsight, even then things hadn’t gotten that bad yet.  There was still safety to be had when you locked your doors and drew shut the blinds.  That was before the looting became a desperate fight for survival.  That was before she and her friend decided their chances were better if they could escape the city and hide out somewhere more isolated until the military could fix things. 

That was before her friend got bit and turned into one of them. 

Terry watched the things pulling the limbs off the body in the car in order to better get at the bones and marrow inside. 

If she was smart about it maybe she could survive, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to.