Becky and the Biker
By Keith Carpenter
The sound of a child crying, that’s what it was. The soft whimper of a small child taking in gulps of air between sniffling moans. It is so typical of any unhappy six year old, but Becky wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t throwing some god awful tantrum so her mother would buy her a new toy, or trying to get one over on her older brother. She was afraid… frightened for her very life and she was there all alone, as the sound of her crying echoed down the long darkened museum corridors.
As far as sounds go, especially the ones that assault your senses, the sound of a crying child can be annoying as hell, but the sound that accompanied Becky’s cries was even more unnerving. It was the relentless pounding and nail scratching that was coming from the other side of the bathroom door next to where Becky was sitting, on the smooth tile floor. The sound of the banging was Becky’s third grade teacher Miss. Cardwell. She was locked in the bathroom banging and scratching at the door because every fiber of her being wanted to get out, but Becky wasn’t going to open the door. It had been locked with the key that was in Becky’s hand with her chubby little fingers clinched tightly around it. Becky had been instructed that she was no to open the door no matter what she heard and Miss. Cardwell was the one who had instructed her so. It was just after midnight and Becky was a scared little girl. She had good reason to be. She was six years old and she had been away from her mother and father for just under a week, which is how long it had been since the ‘incident’ happened.
***
Nobody really had an explanation, but a week earlier, while Becky and her class of 1st graders were on their annual field trip to the Museum of Natural History, something extremely unnatural happened. A small group of people burst into the museum and began to kill everyone in sight. They were crazed and violent and they all looked to be some sort of band of accident victims with their horrid wounds and mangled limbs, but they didn’t seem to be slowed down by the violence that they, themselves seemed to have been subjected to, because they were violent and rabid like wild animals.
Miss. Cardwell had tried to protect her kids but many of them had succumbed to the insanity that seemed to be spreading like wild-fire, before Miss. ‘C’ could get them to safety. The teacher, perplexed and confused, grabbed the hands of a few of her kids and ran outside to find shelter from the madness, but it was even more horrible out there in the streets, so she led the kids back into the museum and found a small room behind one of the exhibits where she hid with five of her students until help could arrive. Somehow between 7:45am, when the kids had loaded the buss in anticipation of a wonderful and fun field trip, and 12 noon, the world had gone crazy.
Miss. Cardwell sat in the small utility room nursing the bite wounds of two of her kids, hoping that help would come, but it never did. Eventually Jared and Tammy succumbed to their bite wounds and died, but to Miss. Cardwell’s horror, they didn’t stay dead. After coming back to life, Jared and Tammy attacked the other students before Miss. Cardwell knew what was happening and the vicious cycle started. For three days Miss. Cardwell and Becky survived in the utility room living off what had been packed in the five kids lunch boxes. Eventually, Johnny and Maxwell, Becky’s two remaining classmates, succumbed to the bites they had received from Tammy and they too came back as retched little cannibals, but Miss. Cardwell, who was a beefy woman, was able to pummel the living dead children into submission, eventually decorating the inside of the small room with six-year-old brain matter, but not without being bitten on the shoulder before it was all said and done.
Somehow Becky was able to get through watching her classmates turn into living dead monsters without a scratch, but that was because being the youngest, Miss. Cardwell had favored her and pushed her behind herself shielding her with her body when the other dead children were attacking. But now it was inevitable. Miss. Cardwell had been bitten and she had seen firsthand what happened to victims of the bites from those crazed lunatics that had uprooted the world as they had known it. Knowing the inevitability of the situation, Miss. Cardwell took Becky by the hand and ventured from the safety of the utility room. She knew she needed to find another survivor who would be willing to take care of Becky and protect her from the savage place the world had become.
The woman and the small girl were making their way down the dark corridor that led to the west wing of the museum. It was in that section where the exhibits for the medieval kingdoms and the pre-historic people’s were showcased. Miss. Cardwell led Becky quietly down the corridor. They were making their way past the exhibit labeled “Dungeons of the Dark Ages”, as quietly as they could, when they heard a crash just down the hall from them. Miss. Cardwell could see bits and pieces of armor skidding across the highly polished granite floor just up the hallway ahead. There was a whiff of that putrid smell of fresh decomposition and something moaned in the shadows where the bits of armor had come from. She knew something was in there and she had a good idea what it was. It had knocked a display piece over and the chances of it having been done by an intelligent living breathing human being were slim at best, besides they had been there several days and the stench of a human who hadn’t had a chance to shower didn’t compare to the stench of one that had started to decompose.
Miss. Cardwell, Erma was her first name, but the kids didn’t even know that, grabbed Becky and ducked behind a 15th century Iron Maiden that stood amongst the dungeon exhibit pieces. She gently placed her hand over Becky’s mouth so any quiet ‘little girl’ whimpers she might expel would be too soft for the zombie to hear.
“Shhh, Becky, you have to be absolutely quiet.”
Erma whispered in Becky’s little ear as a tear ran down Becky’s cheek. They both stood there as still as the statues around them looking down the hallway in anticipation of what they were going to see. Erma’s shoulder was throbbing and she was feeling feverish. She felt like she could have passed out but she knew she had to stay well to take care of Becky. The sun had gone down and the building had been working on emergency power for at least two days. There were only a few emergency lights that lit each hallway and the closest one to them was down the hall, just past whomever or whatever had knocked the suit of armor over. Erma knew it because she could now see the light casting a shadow of the zombie on the corridor wall as it slowly lumbered toward them.
“Becky you stay right here. I’ll be right back.”
Erma left the little girl standing next to the cold iron lady. Being an ancient torture device made it a bit strange, but just the presence of it made Becky feel a bit more secure. Erma Cardwell slowly snuck down the corridor toward the approaching zombie. She hadn’t seen it yet, but from the shadow it was casting, she could tell it was another living dead ghoul just by the way it lumbered and lurched down the hallway. Erma crept up behind the figure of a 15th century executioner and quietly wrapped her hands around the handle of its 6 foot long executioner’s axe. It was only a replica of what one would have looked like in the 15th century, but it was real enough. Forged sharpened steel mounted to a 6 foot long oak handle. She wasn’t sure how heavy it was going to be, but she had no choice but to find out.
“Miss.Cardwell, I have to go to the bathroom.”
Becky whispered to the teacher, who was trying to quietly sneak up on the approaching zombie.
“Shhhh…. Not now, Becky. Stay there and be quiet!”
Erma had turned back to look at Becky, who was hugging the Iron lady. With a frustrated look on her face, she turned back to continue her sneak attack and there in front of her were the grotesque mangled remnants of what had once been the museum security guard. Fredrick Swanson was the name engraved on the blood spattered name tag and for some odd reason that was the one thing she noticed before feeling the ghouls cold clammy hands wrap around her neck.
Erma Cardwell tried to struggle against the horrid smelling zombie, but even though he was almost a week dead, he was still very strong. With the dead security guard only arms-length from her, she didn’t have the swinging room to really use the executioner’s axe and she was finding herself quite helpless. Fighting to keep “Dead Head Fred’s” gaping dripping maw away from her neck, she struggled for her life when suddenly, just as Fred’s gaping putrid mouth was about to sink its gnarly grime-coated teeth into her throat, she heard a “THWAK” sound and suddenly she saw the end of a spear jutting from the middle of “Dead Head Fred’s” mangled twisted face and in that very instant, she felt his claw-like fingers relax and the dead security guard fell limply to the ground.
“Ewwww, he’s stinky!”
The little girl said as she stood there wrinkling her nose with her hands still clutching the end of the wooden spear she had taken from a nearby exhibit dummy.
“Did I do good?”
The shy little girl asked with a cute, somewhat cheeky smile.
“You did very well, Becky.”
Erma hugged the girl and took her by the hand and headed down the hallway toward the bathroom.
***
“Get your fucking ass out of my way or I’m going to blow your fucking brains out too!”
Bear was six foot seven, had one of those ZZ Top beards that went to this belly button and he wore what had once been a white sleeveless ‘T’ shirt under his triple extra large black leather vest that was stained with blood, booze and god only knows what else. It was probably brain matter, but he didn’t want to think too much about that. He was the leader of a wicked biker gang that called themselves the “Rebels of Rot” or “ror” (roar) as they liked to call themselves. They had begun to joke about how fitting their name had become in the previous week since they spent it smashing in zombie skulls and looting every department store they could break into without being overwhelmed with stenchers. Bear had even taken the head of a particularly awful looking stencher and mounted it on the front of his Harley chopper. It went well with the bikes “skull and crossbones” theme.
It was just after dark and the gang had been shooting stenchers in the parking lot of a local mall, but Sane, everyone called him ‘shit for brains’, kept stepping between Bear and the zombies he was aiming at. It had been more than a few times that Bear had almost blown Shane’s head off along with the zombies he was dispatching and the sad thing was that Bear probably would have neither noticed nor cared much. He was known to be a heartless son of a bitch and he liked it that way. The gang had filled their evening with casual zombie target practice and had all but cleared the parking lot of zombies but the one thing they had not thought about in their fun-filled fire arm folly was the fact that their gun shots had attracted more than they bargained for.
“Hey Bear,” Shane pointed up the darkened street that ran along the mall parking lot. “I think we better get out of there.”
The biker gang, and there were only ten of them, had not counted on the fact that the worse weapons a person could use against the living dead, were fire-arms. They were nothing more than noise makers and in an environment where humans were outnumbered at least ten to one, making noise and drawing attention to yourself was not a good idea. From where Bear was standing he could not see anything coming down the dark shadow-laden street, but he could certainly hear what was coming. From the dark emptiness of the eerie shadow-filled street came a chorus of wails, moans and occasional guttural bellows. From the sound of things, there had to be well over a hundred sick putrid stenchers coming toward them. Bear held up his shot gun and cocked it in the air, loading another shell in the chamber.
“If those mother-fuckers want a piece of me, let them come and get it.”
The gang stood their ground, not really knowing the full extent of what they were in for. Bear was thinking maybe a dozen of two of the things would come skulking from the darkness, and he was not only ready for them but he was looking forward to splattering some more zombie brains all over the pavement, much to his horror he was not prepared for what came limping and lumbering into the lamp-light of what, just seconds before was an empty street. The moans became overwhelming as literally hundreds of living dead lumbered toward them at a surprisingly hurried pace. Bear dropped the toothpick that had been clinched in his teeth, virtually all day, and he turned and ran for his chopper. Bear’s momma hadn’t raised any fools and he realized this wasn’t a fight he wanted any part of.
Nine of the bikers mounted their choppers and began to frantically pump the starters in hopes of making a speedy exit, but the hoard of undead were on them before they could do anything. The first to go were Blake and Slam and their bitches Sugar and Isabel. The two women were riding double with their men so it made them a bit slower out of the shoot. The zombies had pulled them off their bikes so quickly they literally didn’t know what hit them. Before Bear knew it, his four friends were sprawled out on the cold pavement with their guts laid out like spilled German sausages. Shane’s bike wouldn’t even start, so he left it and tried to make a run for it, but he was quickly overrun by a dead check-out boy and three zombie children. Bear was able to take out a few zombies with his shotgun but there were way too many of them for it to matter.
He rode a couple of yards on his bike to get far enough away from the carnage that he could get in some shots with his 45 that he kept strapped to his thigh, but even with that advantage he was not able to save the other members of his group. Max and Jerad, who were the only gay bikers in the group and shared a bike, made it farther than the others, but they too were overcome and ripped to shreds. Max tried to help, as Jerad was pulled from the bike and his face and arm ripped off by five mangled rotting freaks that were fighting over his flesh like dogs with a bone. It was his attempt to save Jerad that was the end of him as he fired bullet after bullet into the group, but not taking the time to aim for the head meant certain death for him, because barely scathed by his bullets, the group turned their attention to him and pulled him down, bike and all and had him torn to shreds in seconds.
“Meet me at the corner of 1st and Bounty.”
Bear yelled to the last two survivors of his biker gang. They had gotten away from the hoard but there were too many undead between them to get to where Bear was, so there was no way they could follow him. They nodded in agreement letting him know they heard him over the sound of the carnage and Bear took off like a bat out of hell toward the end of the block. As he rode for his life, Bear looked back to see if his friends got away ok, but it was just in time to see three fucked up stenchers ramble in front of their bike, causing them to topple and their bike to fall over onto the pavement. Taking full advantage of the situation, every zombie within leaping distance of the toppled bike, jumped on them like a high school football tackle, and before Bear could do anything it was over. Every single member of the Rebels of Rot was dead, except for him.
“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” Bear yelled angrily as he watched his remaining gang members get devoured in his rear view mirror. He slammed on his breaks but it only caused his bike to fish-tail and skid sideways into a cluster of metal trash cans, wrecking the handlebars to the point that the bike was no longer useful. Getting up, he brushed the garbage off, grabbed his shot gun and ran for his life. The hoard, that had never stopped coming, was gaining on him and he needed to get as much distance on them as he could.
***
So there Becky was, sitting on the smooth marble floor next to the bathroom with the relentless pounding of Miss. Cardwell’s fists against the inside of the door. Her tears had dried and she had cupped her hands over her ears to muffle the sound, but what she would do next the little girl had no clue. She didn’t know where to go and she didn’t know if any of her family was still alive much less how to get back to her house from the museum. She was just too young and too scared and too vulnerable. Suddenly the pounding stopped. It had been going on relentlessly for hours but now it had stopped.
***
When Miss. Cardwell had taken Becky to the bathroom after her encounter with the security zombie, she had collapsed inside and told Becky to go outside and lock the door. She tried to tell Becky in a way that a six year old could understand that she was going to die and come back as one of those things that had done so many bad things. Becky understood and agreed to do what Miss. Cardwell told her. Erma explained to the girl that she needed to go back down the hall and get the big ring of keys from the belt of the security guard she had just killed. The reason she needed to lock the door was unspoken and Becky understood why.
After a short trip down the hallway to the security guards corpse to get the keys, Becky had come back to the bathroom to find Miss. Cardwell dead. She was lying on the floor and was not breathing. Not really realizing the urgency of the situation, Becky sat by her dead teacher sad and almost to the point of tears, when suddenly the woman’s body began to lurch and twitch. Erma’s eyes flew open and she turned to look at Becky, her eyes pale and milky with a film of death covering them. She slowly began to fumble to her knees in an attempt to get up as she gnarled her teeth and grabbed at the girl.
Becky quickly jumped up and ran out of the bathroom. She knew that the thing rising from the cold tile floor was no longer her 1st grade teacher. Becky slammed the outside door that led from the men’s and woman’s bathroom corridor to the rest of the museum. She tried to stick one of the keys in the lock but it didn’t fit. Inside the bathroom corridor, she could hear her dead teacher slowly pushing the door to the lady’s bathroom open. She knew it would only be seconds before she was pushing on the outside door and breaking out into the museum corridor.
The second key didn’t fit… the third key didn’t fit… the poor panicked six year old, was frantically trying to find the right key. She could hear the zombie Miss. Cardwell shuffling down the short corridor from the lady’s bathroom to the outside door. The fourth key didn’t fit… the fifth key didn’t fit. Now zombies for the most part don’t have the brain power to know how to use a door knob, or even one of those push-down door rails, but the door that led to the bathroom corridor was one of those doors with a big metal handle that you just pulled and it closed slowly with a hydraulic fitting at the top. It had no knob or locking mechanism. To secure it closed you simply had to put a key in the key hole and secure it.
The sixth key didn’t work and by now Becky could see a shadow moving through the crack at the bottom of the door. Her dead, reanimated teacher would be pushing on the door literally in seconds and even in her little girl mind with her little girl logic, she was smart enough to know that if she didn’t get that door locked there was no way she would keep her teacher from getting through. FINALLY, just as there was a slight push against the other side of the door, not hard enough to open it, the seventh key slid inside the slot and Becky turned it with a ‘click’. Just then there was a horrible BANG on the other side of the door and when it didn’t open, the angry zombie on the other side let out a screeching wale that echoed down the hallway. Becky collapsed to the floor in a sitting position, with her back against the wall and the key tightly clinched in her hand and she began to cry.
***
Bear was out of breath. He had been running for blocks and finally he was able to stop and take a breather. It had taken him several blocks and a lot of ducking into doorways and working his way through dark shadowy alleys but he had finally ditched the hoard of stenchers that had been following him since they had gotten a taste of his biker gang. The path Bear had taken that zigzagged through down town led him to a burned out gas station that was all but destroyed. He had dropped his shotgun and his 45 only had three rounds left in it. He knew if he ducked into the gas station he would most likely run into the kind of trouble he had previously gone looking for, but now was trying to avoid.
He crept up to the door of the station and as he feared he heard the familiar grunts of a living corpse feasting on the remains of what had once been a warm blooded human probably just moments before. A human that was doomed to eventually rise up and become just like the creature that killed them. Looking around, Bear knew he had few choices. Down the street to his right there was a large group of stenchers meandering around, just waiting for something to capture their attention so they could lumber off in pursuit of it. To his left were several burning vehicles and they too were surrounded by too many living dead for him to take on by himself. Bear was tired and hungry and ready to find somewhere to hunker down and get some rest without having to worry about being eaten in his sleep. That’s when he noticed that just down the alley in front of him; he could see a large gothic building. He wasn’t familiar with the area but to him it looked like a library or a museum or something. So with three bullets in his only weapon, he snuck down the alley avoiding anything that moved.
***
Becky’s stomach growled loudly. She hugged her mid section to try and stop it in fear that the now quiet zombie on the other side of the door might get riled up again. It had been at least fifteen minutes since dead Erma had made a sound. She had probably just lost interest in the door as zombies do sometimes when something else distracts them, but Becky didn’t know this and she didn’t want to do anything to make her start up her pounding again. Suddenly without warning there was a sound on the other side of the door. It was a soft whimper almost like a puppy or some small animal. In her naïve six-year-old mind, Becky wanted to believe that maybe somehow her teacher was all better. She looked up at the door and slowly started to get to her feet.
She heard the whimper again. This time it was a bit louder. Somehow in her young mind, Becky thought ‘maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just open the door a little bit and see what Miss. Cardwell was doing.’ The sound suddenly changed. It now sounded to Becky like Miss. Cardwell was crying as if she was sad that she had tried to hurt Becky. The little girl quietly slipped the key into the slot and slowly turned it. Just as the key slid the bolt in the locking mechanism to the side and it clicked into place, the door came crashing open. With a crazed look in her twisted zombie face, Erma Cardwell lunged through the door and knocked Becky to the ground.
Becky had quick enough reflexes to think to shove the huge ring of keys (all seventy five of them hung on a four inch diameter metal ring) into her zombie teacher’s mouth. This kept the teacher from being able to bite anything, but she was still lying on top of the tiny girl pinning her to the floor. Erma clinched the key ring in her mouth and flung her head from side to side angrily. She was frustrated that she could not clamp her teeth around the little girl’s throat, but she didn’t have the brains to figure out what to do about it. Finally after about five violent head jerks side to side, the key ring flew from the zombie’s mouth and landed down the hallway at the feet of a big burley man who had just stepped onto the scene. He was well over six foot tall, had a black leather vest on and a beard that went down to his belly. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing and as Becky was almost completely obscured from view by the large teacher’s body he stood there sizing up the situation.
Finally it dawned on Bear what he was seeing. He quickly ran up to Becky’s zombie teacher, who was now trying to take a bite out of her tender six-year-old throat, and kicked her in the head as hard as he could with his big black steel-toed shit kickers. Erma Cardwell’s head flew back and her jaw ripped almost completely out of its socket, spraying the wall behind her with a blood spatter even Dexter would love. Bear then used his foot to push Erma backward onto her back and he pointed the shotgun in her face and pulled the trigger. The racket from the gun was ear-splitting and rang down the museum halls like a cannon shot, but the six-year-old girl was alive and safe as she lay crying on the cold hard floor.
“Hey little lady, are you ok?”
The big burly biker picked Becky up off the floor.
“Who was that lady?”
He asked Becky as he hugged the scared child close to his big burly chest.
“She was my teacher, but one of the kids from my class bit her and her shoulder got hurt and she died.”
“Well I’m sorry I had to do that to her, but I think she was trying to hurt you.”
“She was… and she told me if she fell asleep and woke up again that I needed to stay away from her.”
“Is she the only one of… you know… those bad… I mean are there any more of them around here?
The biker asked in a gentle voice that seemed odd coming from him.
“Yeah, she is the only one now. I had to stick the other bad man with a spear to make him stop hurting Miss. Cardwell and he was the only other one around.”
Bear put Becky down and brushed the hair away from her eyes.
“Well you are probably the bravest little girl I think I’ve ever known. By the way, my name is Bear.”
“You mean like a teddy bear?”
Becky asked with a smile.
“Yeah… I guess it is… just like a teddy bear.”
The big burly biker was having an awkward moment. He had never been so close to children because usually when parents saw him coming, they got their kids as far away as possible.
“Now let’s see if we can find something to eat… this ‘Bear’ is HUNGRY. Do you know where the snack bar is in this place?”
Becky took the big burly biker’s hand and led him down the hall in the direction of the cafeteria. She knew where it was because Mrs. Cardwell had purchased juice boxes for her and the other students when they first arrived at the museum a week before.
***
In the dark but safe recesses of the museum curator’s office Bear slept soundly on a big cushy couch, with the sweet little six-year-old girl curled up next to him. It was the first time he had slept soundly in what seemed like forever. He would never have admitted it, but he felt safe for the first time in days. The two of them, safe and alone without a zombie in sight, slept peacefully.
A small stain of blood soaked into the couch cushion. One of them had been bitten and the other didn’t have a clue. The room was dark and peaceful like a tomb. But the peace didn’t last. Soon it was replaced by something completely different.
The sound of a child eating, that’s what it was, the ravenous grunts of a small deadly zombie child. She was feasting on a mountain of a man, gorging on the warm steamy intestines of the man who had saved her. His throat ripped out and his eyes opened, staring into the darkness, his face frozen in a puzzled expression of disbelief.
THE END
By Keith Carpenter
The sound of a child crying, that’s what it was. The soft whimper of a small child taking in gulps of air between sniffling moans. It is so typical of any unhappy six year old, but Becky wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t throwing some god awful tantrum so her mother would buy her a new toy, or trying to get one over on her older brother. She was afraid… frightened for her very life and she was there all alone, as the sound of her crying echoed down the long darkened museum corridors.
As far as sounds go, especially the ones that assault your senses, the sound of a crying child can be annoying as hell, but the sound that accompanied Becky’s cries was even more unnerving. It was the relentless pounding and nail scratching that was coming from the other side of the bathroom door next to where Becky was sitting, on the smooth tile floor. The sound of the banging was Becky’s third grade teacher Miss. Cardwell. She was locked in the bathroom banging and scratching at the door because every fiber of her being wanted to get out, but Becky wasn’t going to open the door. It had been locked with the key that was in Becky’s hand with her chubby little fingers clinched tightly around it. Becky had been instructed that she was no to open the door no matter what she heard and Miss. Cardwell was the one who had instructed her so. It was just after midnight and Becky was a scared little girl. She had good reason to be. She was six years old and she had been away from her mother and father for just under a week, which is how long it had been since the ‘incident’ happened.
***
Nobody really had an explanation, but a week earlier, while Becky and her class of 1st graders were on their annual field trip to the Museum of Natural History, something extremely unnatural happened. A small group of people burst into the museum and began to kill everyone in sight. They were crazed and violent and they all looked to be some sort of band of accident victims with their horrid wounds and mangled limbs, but they didn’t seem to be slowed down by the violence that they, themselves seemed to have been subjected to, because they were violent and rabid like wild animals.
Miss. Cardwell had tried to protect her kids but many of them had succumbed to the insanity that seemed to be spreading like wild-fire, before Miss. ‘C’ could get them to safety. The teacher, perplexed and confused, grabbed the hands of a few of her kids and ran outside to find shelter from the madness, but it was even more horrible out there in the streets, so she led the kids back into the museum and found a small room behind one of the exhibits where she hid with five of her students until help could arrive. Somehow between 7:45am, when the kids had loaded the buss in anticipation of a wonderful and fun field trip, and 12 noon, the world had gone crazy.
Miss. Cardwell sat in the small utility room nursing the bite wounds of two of her kids, hoping that help would come, but it never did. Eventually Jared and Tammy succumbed to their bite wounds and died, but to Miss. Cardwell’s horror, they didn’t stay dead. After coming back to life, Jared and Tammy attacked the other students before Miss. Cardwell knew what was happening and the vicious cycle started. For three days Miss. Cardwell and Becky survived in the utility room living off what had been packed in the five kids lunch boxes. Eventually, Johnny and Maxwell, Becky’s two remaining classmates, succumbed to the bites they had received from Tammy and they too came back as retched little cannibals, but Miss. Cardwell, who was a beefy woman, was able to pummel the living dead children into submission, eventually decorating the inside of the small room with six-year-old brain matter, but not without being bitten on the shoulder before it was all said and done.
Somehow Becky was able to get through watching her classmates turn into living dead monsters without a scratch, but that was because being the youngest, Miss. Cardwell had favored her and pushed her behind herself shielding her with her body when the other dead children were attacking. But now it was inevitable. Miss. Cardwell had been bitten and she had seen firsthand what happened to victims of the bites from those crazed lunatics that had uprooted the world as they had known it. Knowing the inevitability of the situation, Miss. Cardwell took Becky by the hand and ventured from the safety of the utility room. She knew she needed to find another survivor who would be willing to take care of Becky and protect her from the savage place the world had become.
The woman and the small girl were making their way down the dark corridor that led to the west wing of the museum. It was in that section where the exhibits for the medieval kingdoms and the pre-historic people’s were showcased. Miss. Cardwell led Becky quietly down the corridor. They were making their way past the exhibit labeled “Dungeons of the Dark Ages”, as quietly as they could, when they heard a crash just down the hall from them. Miss. Cardwell could see bits and pieces of armor skidding across the highly polished granite floor just up the hallway ahead. There was a whiff of that putrid smell of fresh decomposition and something moaned in the shadows where the bits of armor had come from. She knew something was in there and she had a good idea what it was. It had knocked a display piece over and the chances of it having been done by an intelligent living breathing human being were slim at best, besides they had been there several days and the stench of a human who hadn’t had a chance to shower didn’t compare to the stench of one that had started to decompose.
Miss. Cardwell, Erma was her first name, but the kids didn’t even know that, grabbed Becky and ducked behind a 15th century Iron Maiden that stood amongst the dungeon exhibit pieces. She gently placed her hand over Becky’s mouth so any quiet ‘little girl’ whimpers she might expel would be too soft for the zombie to hear.
“Shhh, Becky, you have to be absolutely quiet.”
Erma whispered in Becky’s little ear as a tear ran down Becky’s cheek. They both stood there as still as the statues around them looking down the hallway in anticipation of what they were going to see. Erma’s shoulder was throbbing and she was feeling feverish. She felt like she could have passed out but she knew she had to stay well to take care of Becky. The sun had gone down and the building had been working on emergency power for at least two days. There were only a few emergency lights that lit each hallway and the closest one to them was down the hall, just past whomever or whatever had knocked the suit of armor over. Erma knew it because she could now see the light casting a shadow of the zombie on the corridor wall as it slowly lumbered toward them.
“Becky you stay right here. I’ll be right back.”
Erma left the little girl standing next to the cold iron lady. Being an ancient torture device made it a bit strange, but just the presence of it made Becky feel a bit more secure. Erma Cardwell slowly snuck down the corridor toward the approaching zombie. She hadn’t seen it yet, but from the shadow it was casting, she could tell it was another living dead ghoul just by the way it lumbered and lurched down the hallway. Erma crept up behind the figure of a 15th century executioner and quietly wrapped her hands around the handle of its 6 foot long executioner’s axe. It was only a replica of what one would have looked like in the 15th century, but it was real enough. Forged sharpened steel mounted to a 6 foot long oak handle. She wasn’t sure how heavy it was going to be, but she had no choice but to find out.
“Miss.Cardwell, I have to go to the bathroom.”
Becky whispered to the teacher, who was trying to quietly sneak up on the approaching zombie.
“Shhhh…. Not now, Becky. Stay there and be quiet!”
Erma had turned back to look at Becky, who was hugging the Iron lady. With a frustrated look on her face, she turned back to continue her sneak attack and there in front of her were the grotesque mangled remnants of what had once been the museum security guard. Fredrick Swanson was the name engraved on the blood spattered name tag and for some odd reason that was the one thing she noticed before feeling the ghouls cold clammy hands wrap around her neck.
Erma Cardwell tried to struggle against the horrid smelling zombie, but even though he was almost a week dead, he was still very strong. With the dead security guard only arms-length from her, she didn’t have the swinging room to really use the executioner’s axe and she was finding herself quite helpless. Fighting to keep “Dead Head Fred’s” gaping dripping maw away from her neck, she struggled for her life when suddenly, just as Fred’s gaping putrid mouth was about to sink its gnarly grime-coated teeth into her throat, she heard a “THWAK” sound and suddenly she saw the end of a spear jutting from the middle of “Dead Head Fred’s” mangled twisted face and in that very instant, she felt his claw-like fingers relax and the dead security guard fell limply to the ground.
“Ewwww, he’s stinky!”
The little girl said as she stood there wrinkling her nose with her hands still clutching the end of the wooden spear she had taken from a nearby exhibit dummy.
“Did I do good?”
The shy little girl asked with a cute, somewhat cheeky smile.
“You did very well, Becky.”
Erma hugged the girl and took her by the hand and headed down the hallway toward the bathroom.
***
“Get your fucking ass out of my way or I’m going to blow your fucking brains out too!”
Bear was six foot seven, had one of those ZZ Top beards that went to this belly button and he wore what had once been a white sleeveless ‘T’ shirt under his triple extra large black leather vest that was stained with blood, booze and god only knows what else. It was probably brain matter, but he didn’t want to think too much about that. He was the leader of a wicked biker gang that called themselves the “Rebels of Rot” or “ror” (roar) as they liked to call themselves. They had begun to joke about how fitting their name had become in the previous week since they spent it smashing in zombie skulls and looting every department store they could break into without being overwhelmed with stenchers. Bear had even taken the head of a particularly awful looking stencher and mounted it on the front of his Harley chopper. It went well with the bikes “skull and crossbones” theme.
It was just after dark and the gang had been shooting stenchers in the parking lot of a local mall, but Sane, everyone called him ‘shit for brains’, kept stepping between Bear and the zombies he was aiming at. It had been more than a few times that Bear had almost blown Shane’s head off along with the zombies he was dispatching and the sad thing was that Bear probably would have neither noticed nor cared much. He was known to be a heartless son of a bitch and he liked it that way. The gang had filled their evening with casual zombie target practice and had all but cleared the parking lot of zombies but the one thing they had not thought about in their fun-filled fire arm folly was the fact that their gun shots had attracted more than they bargained for.
“Hey Bear,” Shane pointed up the darkened street that ran along the mall parking lot. “I think we better get out of there.”
The biker gang, and there were only ten of them, had not counted on the fact that the worse weapons a person could use against the living dead, were fire-arms. They were nothing more than noise makers and in an environment where humans were outnumbered at least ten to one, making noise and drawing attention to yourself was not a good idea. From where Bear was standing he could not see anything coming down the dark shadow-laden street, but he could certainly hear what was coming. From the dark emptiness of the eerie shadow-filled street came a chorus of wails, moans and occasional guttural bellows. From the sound of things, there had to be well over a hundred sick putrid stenchers coming toward them. Bear held up his shot gun and cocked it in the air, loading another shell in the chamber.
“If those mother-fuckers want a piece of me, let them come and get it.”
The gang stood their ground, not really knowing the full extent of what they were in for. Bear was thinking maybe a dozen of two of the things would come skulking from the darkness, and he was not only ready for them but he was looking forward to splattering some more zombie brains all over the pavement, much to his horror he was not prepared for what came limping and lumbering into the lamp-light of what, just seconds before was an empty street. The moans became overwhelming as literally hundreds of living dead lumbered toward them at a surprisingly hurried pace. Bear dropped the toothpick that had been clinched in his teeth, virtually all day, and he turned and ran for his chopper. Bear’s momma hadn’t raised any fools and he realized this wasn’t a fight he wanted any part of.
Nine of the bikers mounted their choppers and began to frantically pump the starters in hopes of making a speedy exit, but the hoard of undead were on them before they could do anything. The first to go were Blake and Slam and their bitches Sugar and Isabel. The two women were riding double with their men so it made them a bit slower out of the shoot. The zombies had pulled them off their bikes so quickly they literally didn’t know what hit them. Before Bear knew it, his four friends were sprawled out on the cold pavement with their guts laid out like spilled German sausages. Shane’s bike wouldn’t even start, so he left it and tried to make a run for it, but he was quickly overrun by a dead check-out boy and three zombie children. Bear was able to take out a few zombies with his shotgun but there were way too many of them for it to matter.
He rode a couple of yards on his bike to get far enough away from the carnage that he could get in some shots with his 45 that he kept strapped to his thigh, but even with that advantage he was not able to save the other members of his group. Max and Jerad, who were the only gay bikers in the group and shared a bike, made it farther than the others, but they too were overcome and ripped to shreds. Max tried to help, as Jerad was pulled from the bike and his face and arm ripped off by five mangled rotting freaks that were fighting over his flesh like dogs with a bone. It was his attempt to save Jerad that was the end of him as he fired bullet after bullet into the group, but not taking the time to aim for the head meant certain death for him, because barely scathed by his bullets, the group turned their attention to him and pulled him down, bike and all and had him torn to shreds in seconds.
“Meet me at the corner of 1st and Bounty.”
Bear yelled to the last two survivors of his biker gang. They had gotten away from the hoard but there were too many undead between them to get to where Bear was, so there was no way they could follow him. They nodded in agreement letting him know they heard him over the sound of the carnage and Bear took off like a bat out of hell toward the end of the block. As he rode for his life, Bear looked back to see if his friends got away ok, but it was just in time to see three fucked up stenchers ramble in front of their bike, causing them to topple and their bike to fall over onto the pavement. Taking full advantage of the situation, every zombie within leaping distance of the toppled bike, jumped on them like a high school football tackle, and before Bear could do anything it was over. Every single member of the Rebels of Rot was dead, except for him.
“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” Bear yelled angrily as he watched his remaining gang members get devoured in his rear view mirror. He slammed on his breaks but it only caused his bike to fish-tail and skid sideways into a cluster of metal trash cans, wrecking the handlebars to the point that the bike was no longer useful. Getting up, he brushed the garbage off, grabbed his shot gun and ran for his life. The hoard, that had never stopped coming, was gaining on him and he needed to get as much distance on them as he could.
***
So there Becky was, sitting on the smooth marble floor next to the bathroom with the relentless pounding of Miss. Cardwell’s fists against the inside of the door. Her tears had dried and she had cupped her hands over her ears to muffle the sound, but what she would do next the little girl had no clue. She didn’t know where to go and she didn’t know if any of her family was still alive much less how to get back to her house from the museum. She was just too young and too scared and too vulnerable. Suddenly the pounding stopped. It had been going on relentlessly for hours but now it had stopped.
***
When Miss. Cardwell had taken Becky to the bathroom after her encounter with the security zombie, she had collapsed inside and told Becky to go outside and lock the door. She tried to tell Becky in a way that a six year old could understand that she was going to die and come back as one of those things that had done so many bad things. Becky understood and agreed to do what Miss. Cardwell told her. Erma explained to the girl that she needed to go back down the hall and get the big ring of keys from the belt of the security guard she had just killed. The reason she needed to lock the door was unspoken and Becky understood why.
After a short trip down the hallway to the security guards corpse to get the keys, Becky had come back to the bathroom to find Miss. Cardwell dead. She was lying on the floor and was not breathing. Not really realizing the urgency of the situation, Becky sat by her dead teacher sad and almost to the point of tears, when suddenly the woman’s body began to lurch and twitch. Erma’s eyes flew open and she turned to look at Becky, her eyes pale and milky with a film of death covering them. She slowly began to fumble to her knees in an attempt to get up as she gnarled her teeth and grabbed at the girl.
Becky quickly jumped up and ran out of the bathroom. She knew that the thing rising from the cold tile floor was no longer her 1st grade teacher. Becky slammed the outside door that led from the men’s and woman’s bathroom corridor to the rest of the museum. She tried to stick one of the keys in the lock but it didn’t fit. Inside the bathroom corridor, she could hear her dead teacher slowly pushing the door to the lady’s bathroom open. She knew it would only be seconds before she was pushing on the outside door and breaking out into the museum corridor.
The second key didn’t fit… the third key didn’t fit… the poor panicked six year old, was frantically trying to find the right key. She could hear the zombie Miss. Cardwell shuffling down the short corridor from the lady’s bathroom to the outside door. The fourth key didn’t fit… the fifth key didn’t fit. Now zombies for the most part don’t have the brain power to know how to use a door knob, or even one of those push-down door rails, but the door that led to the bathroom corridor was one of those doors with a big metal handle that you just pulled and it closed slowly with a hydraulic fitting at the top. It had no knob or locking mechanism. To secure it closed you simply had to put a key in the key hole and secure it.
The sixth key didn’t work and by now Becky could see a shadow moving through the crack at the bottom of the door. Her dead, reanimated teacher would be pushing on the door literally in seconds and even in her little girl mind with her little girl logic, she was smart enough to know that if she didn’t get that door locked there was no way she would keep her teacher from getting through. FINALLY, just as there was a slight push against the other side of the door, not hard enough to open it, the seventh key slid inside the slot and Becky turned it with a ‘click’. Just then there was a horrible BANG on the other side of the door and when it didn’t open, the angry zombie on the other side let out a screeching wale that echoed down the hallway. Becky collapsed to the floor in a sitting position, with her back against the wall and the key tightly clinched in her hand and she began to cry.
***
Bear was out of breath. He had been running for blocks and finally he was able to stop and take a breather. It had taken him several blocks and a lot of ducking into doorways and working his way through dark shadowy alleys but he had finally ditched the hoard of stenchers that had been following him since they had gotten a taste of his biker gang. The path Bear had taken that zigzagged through down town led him to a burned out gas station that was all but destroyed. He had dropped his shotgun and his 45 only had three rounds left in it. He knew if he ducked into the gas station he would most likely run into the kind of trouble he had previously gone looking for, but now was trying to avoid.
He crept up to the door of the station and as he feared he heard the familiar grunts of a living corpse feasting on the remains of what had once been a warm blooded human probably just moments before. A human that was doomed to eventually rise up and become just like the creature that killed them. Looking around, Bear knew he had few choices. Down the street to his right there was a large group of stenchers meandering around, just waiting for something to capture their attention so they could lumber off in pursuit of it. To his left were several burning vehicles and they too were surrounded by too many living dead for him to take on by himself. Bear was tired and hungry and ready to find somewhere to hunker down and get some rest without having to worry about being eaten in his sleep. That’s when he noticed that just down the alley in front of him; he could see a large gothic building. He wasn’t familiar with the area but to him it looked like a library or a museum or something. So with three bullets in his only weapon, he snuck down the alley avoiding anything that moved.
***
Becky’s stomach growled loudly. She hugged her mid section to try and stop it in fear that the now quiet zombie on the other side of the door might get riled up again. It had been at least fifteen minutes since dead Erma had made a sound. She had probably just lost interest in the door as zombies do sometimes when something else distracts them, but Becky didn’t know this and she didn’t want to do anything to make her start up her pounding again. Suddenly without warning there was a sound on the other side of the door. It was a soft whimper almost like a puppy or some small animal. In her naïve six-year-old mind, Becky wanted to believe that maybe somehow her teacher was all better. She looked up at the door and slowly started to get to her feet.
She heard the whimper again. This time it was a bit louder. Somehow in her young mind, Becky thought ‘maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just open the door a little bit and see what Miss. Cardwell was doing.’ The sound suddenly changed. It now sounded to Becky like Miss. Cardwell was crying as if she was sad that she had tried to hurt Becky. The little girl quietly slipped the key into the slot and slowly turned it. Just as the key slid the bolt in the locking mechanism to the side and it clicked into place, the door came crashing open. With a crazed look in her twisted zombie face, Erma Cardwell lunged through the door and knocked Becky to the ground.
Becky had quick enough reflexes to think to shove the huge ring of keys (all seventy five of them hung on a four inch diameter metal ring) into her zombie teacher’s mouth. This kept the teacher from being able to bite anything, but she was still lying on top of the tiny girl pinning her to the floor. Erma clinched the key ring in her mouth and flung her head from side to side angrily. She was frustrated that she could not clamp her teeth around the little girl’s throat, but she didn’t have the brains to figure out what to do about it. Finally after about five violent head jerks side to side, the key ring flew from the zombie’s mouth and landed down the hallway at the feet of a big burley man who had just stepped onto the scene. He was well over six foot tall, had a black leather vest on and a beard that went down to his belly. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing and as Becky was almost completely obscured from view by the large teacher’s body he stood there sizing up the situation.
Finally it dawned on Bear what he was seeing. He quickly ran up to Becky’s zombie teacher, who was now trying to take a bite out of her tender six-year-old throat, and kicked her in the head as hard as he could with his big black steel-toed shit kickers. Erma Cardwell’s head flew back and her jaw ripped almost completely out of its socket, spraying the wall behind her with a blood spatter even Dexter would love. Bear then used his foot to push Erma backward onto her back and he pointed the shotgun in her face and pulled the trigger. The racket from the gun was ear-splitting and rang down the museum halls like a cannon shot, but the six-year-old girl was alive and safe as she lay crying on the cold hard floor.
“Hey little lady, are you ok?”
The big burly biker picked Becky up off the floor.
“Who was that lady?”
He asked Becky as he hugged the scared child close to his big burly chest.
“She was my teacher, but one of the kids from my class bit her and her shoulder got hurt and she died.”
“Well I’m sorry I had to do that to her, but I think she was trying to hurt you.”
“She was… and she told me if she fell asleep and woke up again that I needed to stay away from her.”
“Is she the only one of… you know… those bad… I mean are there any more of them around here?
The biker asked in a gentle voice that seemed odd coming from him.
“Yeah, she is the only one now. I had to stick the other bad man with a spear to make him stop hurting Miss. Cardwell and he was the only other one around.”
Bear put Becky down and brushed the hair away from her eyes.
“Well you are probably the bravest little girl I think I’ve ever known. By the way, my name is Bear.”
“You mean like a teddy bear?”
Becky asked with a smile.
“Yeah… I guess it is… just like a teddy bear.”
The big burly biker was having an awkward moment. He had never been so close to children because usually when parents saw him coming, they got their kids as far away as possible.
“Now let’s see if we can find something to eat… this ‘Bear’ is HUNGRY. Do you know where the snack bar is in this place?”
Becky took the big burly biker’s hand and led him down the hall in the direction of the cafeteria. She knew where it was because Mrs. Cardwell had purchased juice boxes for her and the other students when they first arrived at the museum a week before.
***
In the dark but safe recesses of the museum curator’s office Bear slept soundly on a big cushy couch, with the sweet little six-year-old girl curled up next to him. It was the first time he had slept soundly in what seemed like forever. He would never have admitted it, but he felt safe for the first time in days. The two of them, safe and alone without a zombie in sight, slept peacefully.
A small stain of blood soaked into the couch cushion. One of them had been bitten and the other didn’t have a clue. The room was dark and peaceful like a tomb. But the peace didn’t last. Soon it was replaced by something completely different.
The sound of a child eating, that’s what it was, the ravenous grunts of a small deadly zombie child. She was feasting on a mountain of a man, gorging on the warm steamy intestines of the man who had saved her. His throat ripped out and his eyes opened, staring into the darkness, his face frozen in a puzzled expression of disbelief.
THE END