The Escape (not WA related)

[reaper239]

i love irony. i love to work it into a story in such a way that it catches you off guard. i also love twists. now while this story doesn't necessarily have a twist ending, it does have a twisted ending. and let's face it, that's almost as good. so without further ado... oh please comment and tell me what you think, all constructive criticism welcome.


The Escape

Jimmy pulled the trigger dropping the hammer on the shell in the breach of the shotgun, obliterating the brain of the zombie charging through the door of his apartment. He racked the slide dropping the smoking shell to the floor and slamming home a fresh one. He stepped back and kicked the door shut. He reached forward and slid the deadbolt shut with a satisfying *snick*. He walked into the kitchen and drew a glass of water from the sink.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He’d killed before but zombies were different. They didn’t show fear like the gangbangers he’d had to deal with for the Irish mob. At least they died when you shot them through the chest. Not so with zombies. Headshots were the only way to put them down. Fortunately with a shotty, they may have to be close, but you just have to point it in their general direction to score a headshot.

Jimmy’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He downed the water making a mess because he couldn’t stop shaking. There was something unholy about the dead walking. It was a throw back to his childhood and all those Romero movies he watched as a kid. “When there’s no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth.” The only problem now was the plague was brought by the bugs. The bugs came from hell. Had to. Jimmy crossed himself.

He walked to his closet and grabbed the Kevlar vest he used on jobs and put it on. Then he put on a leather jacket to help ward off bites. Then he put on his crucifix to help ward off evil. He wished he could go to confession. Jimmy was raised a good little Catholic boy, and when hell came to earth, that was what he fell back on. He prayed as he filled his pockets with shells. In the three days he’d been hiding in his apartment, he’d been reading his bible and scratching scripture references on the sides of shotgun shells. He’d tried the same things on the sides of his .45 rounds but there wasn’t enough room.

He slid the .45 in his waist and stuffed clips in any pockets not used up by shells. He set the shotgun down by the table and opened the fridge. He pulled out some of his mama’s potato and meat pie that he brought home the day before hell broke loose in Baltimore. He set it carefully in the microwave and set the timer to two minutes. He walked over to the radio and turned it on. There was a public service announcement: “Attention all residents of the Baltimore area, the national guard is performing extractions at dawn every morning from the following locations; M&T Bank Stadium…” there was a massive list of locations that followed but the only one that concerned him was the first. He had to get to the stadium tonight. It was that or eat a shell.

The microwave dinged and he jumped. He shut off the radio with trembling hands and walked back to the microwave. He pulled out the food well aware that that would be the last time he would eat his mama’s cooking. Tears leaked from his eyes and his voice cracked as he blessed the food and prayed for his poor mama. He watched her get eaten outside of her house. He did her a favor by making sure that she stayed dead, but it almost broke him. His nose ran slightly as he stuck the first blessed forkful of his mama’s meat pie in his mouth. He chewed slowly, savoring the distinct flavor that only she ever managed to achieve. 20 min. later he was done and rested until dark in three hours.

5 hours later he raised his head from the table. It took him a moment to get his bearings. He was loaded for bear, the shotgun leaned against the table, and there was a puddle of drool on the table. He finally remembered and almost panicked wondering how long he’d been out. He looked at the clock and realized that it was now two hours after sunset. He still had time but he had to move.

He grabbed his back pack filled with food and water, picked up the shotty and eased the door open. The zombie he blew away earlier was still there. He crept through the hall stepping over dead bodies and bodies of what could have been sleeping zombies. When darkness fell they tended to look for a place indoors and go to sleep. From what he could tell on the radio, no one knew why. He did know that they slept light. So if you got too near and made too much noise you would quickly have a horde on you.

He opened the door to go outside and stopped cold. There was a zombie standing in front of the door with its back to the door. There were also sleeping zombies scattered in front of the door. Jimmy had heard reports of insomniac zombies but this was the first one he’d ever seen. Slowly he eased the door shut and crept to the exit on the other side of the building. He emerged on E Pratt St.

He walked west on Pratt until he came to a small bridge which was covered in burning wreckage. He thought about going around but he didn’t have that much time. He walked up to some wreckage and looked for a route over. His blood froze. On the other side was an insomniac. It was looking off to one side and he could see it through a hole in the wreckage. He had no real way past it and any noise could draw its attention. He pulled his pocket knife out and opened it up. He looked to the edge of the bridge that it wasn’t looking at and saw that it would be really difficult to get around the side of the bridge, but that it was potentially the quietest.

Jimmy slipped over the side with his shotty slung across his back and shimmied across some broken guard rail under a pickup whose back wheels had slid off the bridge. It was hard work because jimmy was slightly out of shape. But it was quiet. Jimmy pulled himself up as quietly as possible and readied the knife in his hands. The insomniac was still facing away as Jimmy approached and raised his knife. He reached quickly around its head and plunged the knife in the back of its neck severing its spinal cord and dropping it to the ground. It was still “alive” but it couldn’t move or cry now. He checked for more before continuing over the rest of the wreckage.

He walked for a while and eventually made it to Light St. he stopped and took some water out of his pack and took a swig. Just a little bit down Pratt between Light St. and S Charles St. were some cars, and out of those cars came a stooped shuffling figure. The street lights were working still and it was just outside one so that he couldn’t tell what it was. Suddenly it stopped and jimmy could tell it was looking right at him. He had time to think, “Oh no, not another insomniac,” when it screamed at him, waking all the zombies in a three block radius.

He cut left on Light but it was too late, they were coming out of the woodwork. Jimmy sprinted down Light but more than a block down it was filling with zombies in various stages of transformation. He ran, weaving between the slower ones and shooting the faster ones with the shotty. They kept coming. He reached the entrance of the Hyatt Regency and saw the smashed glass. He couldn’t go anywhere else because he was surrounded so he ran in shooting two as he crossed the threshold.

He ran up the stairs, going up and up and further still until he reached the roof. He slammed through the door and blew a man off the roof with a gut shot. He thought the man was actually alive but there was no telling now. He spun around and fired one off as a zombie ran for the door.

He pumped the slide and came up empty. He slammed the door shut and grabbed a piece of wood to hold the door shut. He started loading shells back in the shotty as sunlight peeked over the horizon. He could see the stadium from where he was and saw the National Guard pulling away from the stadium. Tears welled up in his eyes.

He racked the slide. There was no hope now. It was all over. He slumped to his knees tears streaking his grime covered face. He sobbed because he actually thought he might have a chance to escape. He cried holding his shotgun, for himself, his mama, his brother, and, oddly enough, for the zombies. They didn’t ask for this. He pointed his face at the sky and whispered a prayer, “God, forgive me and help those people who were infected. I’m sorry God for the pain I’ve caused. But I won’t be one of them.”He put the barrel in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. As he fell forward still holding the slide, the butt of the gun struck the ground and his hand forced the slide back ejecting the shell. It landed inscription up.

The scripture was 2 Samuel 22: 4 which reads: “I call on the Lord, Who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.”