"Hey, Mister."
Blackness slowly grayed out, turned to fog. The fog dissolved away until it became the melted ice cream puddle Jess' ear was stuck in.
"Mister. Hey, man. Come on, wake up."
Jess blinked and tried to turn his head. Pain coursed through his temple and pounded in his ears. He managed a low moan and immediately wished he hadn't made a sound--it reverberated in his head and brought fresh pounding with each beat.
"Hey, Mister. You need to get up. Now."
"Unnnnnnn..."
Jess couldn't move his head. He found that his fingers moved slightly, whether of their own volition or of his, he couldn't tell.
"Unnnnnnnn ..."
Jess found the strength to push himself off the ground and rise to an almost sitting position. Slowly, he began to get his bearings. He was still in the middle of the street. It was dark. It had been dark before, when he and Sheila were going to see the parade.
Sheila! He bolted to his feet, his head swimming in a sea of red, and scoured his surroundings. Desperate to find his fiance, he bounded from one mound of dead bodies to the next, searching through the bodies, looking for her trademark Skechers and cargo pants.
"Mister! If we don't move, we're gonna be dinner."
The boulevard was devoid of life. At least devoid of current life--dead bodies littered the street and sidewalks, small piles of the dead strewn about the asphalt. Most of the dead looked as if they'd been mauled--arms and legs gnawed on, any flesh exposed had been torn from the meat and bones beneath.
"Mister!"
He looked over to see a boy, maybe fifteen years old, hidden in the shadow of a doorway, not ten feet away. Jess could barely make him out but what he could see was distressing. The kid's clothes were filthy and, from what Jess could tell, the kid was shaking like a leaf. He bent down to sift through another pile of bodies and body parts.
"Uhhnnnnnnn..."
"Wha--", thunder blossomed in his ears. "What's that noise, son?"
The kid in the doorway slowly raised his arm and pointed behind Jess.
Jess turned his head.
And suddenly wished he hadn't.
The most vile sight of his life was shuffling down the boulevard, heading directly towards him. It was a man--at least Jess thought it used to be a man, he wasn't exactly sure. The thing shuffling towards him had no face--and no jaw for that matter--its palate hung down into the shredded remains of its mouth. Somewhere along the line, it had also lost all flesh below the knee and tattered strips of clothing clung to its decaying flesh, molding to it. One of its feet was completely gone, so it dragged its left leg behind it, scraping bone against asphalt. A dark trail of blood, shiny in the lights that lined the boulevard, scribbled along the asphalt behind it. Its face hung, sloughed off half the skull and the empty sockets within seemed to stare ahead, unseeing.
"Uhhhnnnnnnnnn..."
It was close now. Jess felt his guts turn to ice as he watched this monstrosity amble towards him and the boy. He pushed himself up to a standing position and nearly fell forward. He was not stable.
"Dude!" the boy hissed insistently. "We are so on the menu."
Jess lurched towards the doorway then looked back at where he had lain in the street. Dead bodies lay strewn around where he'd been knocked unconscious but Sheila was not among them.
He pointed towards the street. "The girl I was with ... you see her?"
The kid shook his head and grabbed Jess' hand. "Come on, that thing's gonna be here in a second, so we'd better not be."
But Jess wasn't listening. His thoughts were focused.
Sheila.
He called her name. It echoed off the deserted facades that lined the street. "Sheila!"
The shambling creature stumbled closer still. Movement across the street caught Jess' eye. From the shadows ambled forth a small group of people but none of them looked particularly human anymore. Jess knew in his guts they were zombies--straight out of a horror movie--but still had some small part of him argue that it couldn't possibly be so. This was reality, not some cheesy, low budget movie.
"Sheila!" He screamed again.
In a brief instant, all became clear. Sheila was gone. Jess didn't know if she was dead or if she'd escaped the park but he had to find her and right now, this creature, these ... things were the reason she was gone.
With no warning whatsoever, rage filled Jess' heart. All his love for Sheila poured forth and fueled the anger that boiled up within him.
And this creature ... all of them were the reason why.
Jess let out a primitive howl and launched himself at the shambling thing making its way down the boulevard. His sanity argued with him even as his legs pumped and brought him to the shuffling spectre of death before him.
With a leap, he was upon the zombie in the street, beating the creature with a flurry of fists. The zombie raised its arms and grabbed Jess with ragged fingertips. The fingers were cold like ice and greasy with slick blood and they clenched his legs like a vise.
Jess swung his fists and clubbed the creature about his ruined face but to no avail. The thing still fought him, attempting to force his exposed flesh towards the gaping, ruined maw, oblivious to the fact that it would be virtually impossible to consume him or any other victim.
Realizing his legs were impossible to move, Jess decided on a different tactic. The group slowly moving towards the struggling pair made up his mind for him. Using his body weight, Jess threw the two of them to the ground. With a battle cry, he grabbed the zombie's ruined skull in both his hands and smashed it into the ground over and over and over. The anger at his fiance's disappearance or death--the unknown outcome either way--poured forth from him and he used that anger to bash this creature's brains in.
With a final shout, Jess smashed the zombie's head into the ground. A black, brackish liquid pooled on the ground and the zombie moved no more.
Slowly, Jess stood up, suddenly realizing that the group that had been moving towards them was almost upon him. He backed up quickly and made his way back towards the doorway where the kid still stood.
He paused there a moment and stared the kid in the eye.
"You were saying?"
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