Cally thought nothing could be worse than waking up to face her 30th birthday to the sounds of multiple car alarms going off and a hangover she'd probably be feeling for the next week. But as it turned out, she was wrong. Groggily she started to pull the pillow over her head hoping the block out the blaring noise, but smell of smoke wafting through her bedroom window caught her attention. Leaping from the bed, she grabbed for whatever clothes lay discarded across the bedroom floor, struggling into them as she stumbled towards the door, mumbling to herself, "Those dip-shits better not have set the damn house on fire." She hurried down the stairs, trying not to trip over the empty beer cans littering nearly the entire length. At the bottom of the steps, she took a good look around.
"Sonuvabitch," she gritted out, more loudly this time. Her house was totally trashed, and she was kicking herself for ever having agreed to let her friends have her birthday party there. As she roamed through the house taking in the destruction one 'little' birthday party had caused, she noticed that a few of the guilty parties were still passed out in the living room, Jessie and Mark somehow managing to squeeze themselves on the couch together. As she temporarily forgot about her quest to discover the cause of the smoke smell, she continued roaming the house and discovered Kurt passed out on the bathroom floor, and she wasn't sure, but she thought that that was David passed out on the kitchen counter. She sighed and contemplated hiding the car keys that she'd taken away from all of them the night before until they'd cleaned the place up. At least the other 80 or so people, most of whom she didn't even know, had all disappeared after the meteor shower.
Shaking her head, she moved back towards the living room. As she neared the stairs, she caught sight of blonde hair bouncing down the steps as Shelly came into view. It was totally inconceivable that the same girl who'd been doing keg stands and beer bongs all night long could be so perky and cheerful the next morning. Some days Cally really hated her friends.
"Cal, I'm so sorry about your house," she called out as she reached the bottom and saw her. When all she got was a disinterested grunt in reply, she continued talking, moving on to the subject of the party. "Oh my god, wasn't last night a blast though? I mean, seriously Cal, how many people get a frickin' meteor shower for the grand finale of their party? Your 30th is going to go down in history as one of the top 10 greatest bashes."
"I think you're exaggerating a little," grumbled Cally. "How the hell can you be so cheerful? It's 7 o'clock in the morning for christ-sakes!"
"Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays," joked Shelly, quoting one of their favorite movies.
"Not funny."
"So what's with all the car alarms going off out there?" Shelly asked, following along beside Cally.
"That's what I was just going to find out," replied Cally, pulling open the curtains on the big front window. As the sunlight streamed into the room both girls were momentarily blinded as they peered out. As their eyes came into focus they looked at each other for a second, shock and horror filling both their expressions before their eyes were drawn back to the scene outside the window. Chaos was the only word to describe what they were seeing. On one side of the block people were running through the streets screaming, while off in the distance buildings on fire sent smoke billowing into the air, and right before their eyes two cars collided.
All of that was nothing when compared to the sight of the body on the front lawn across the street. It laid face down, the grass around it turning crimson as its blood drained out of the many wounds that covered its body. Its left arm had been completely torn from the shoulder socket, nowhere to be seen, while the lower part of the left leg lay several yards from the rest of the corpse.
"What, in the name of all that's holy, is that?" Shelly whispered in horror, pointing at the body.
Cally didn't reply, instead she kept staring at the body, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Maybe she'd wake up and it'd all be a weird dream…..and maybe the Lions would be Super Bowl contenders, she thought, rolling her eyes.
A loud scream followed by some bizarre snarling drew both of their attention. A young man was running down the sidewalk, a pack of people chasing after him. "Oh my God, I think that's old Mrs. Herbert from down the street," Cally said in awe at the old woman in the chase pack.
"Do you think they caught him stealing or something?" Shelly asked, confusion in her voice. The strange snarls grew louder as the man and his pursuers came closer.
"They're growling at him like animals," Cally whispered.
At just that moment, the man tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and fell face first to the hard concrete. He scrambled to get to his feet, and even managed to scramble a few more paces before the pack pounced on him. He shrieked in agony as a half dozen mouths bit into his body, rending pieces of flesh away with their teeth.
"Oh god…oh jesus…" Shelly squeaked, watching in a horrific awe as the man struggled to get away from his attackers. He screamed for help, but the sound was all but drowned out in the growing snarls and grunts of the pack, in full feeding frenzy now.
Cally grabbed her friend's arm, forcing the blond to look at her. "Shelly, I need you to go wake up the others….now!"
For a moment it looked like she was going to argue with her, she glanced back out the window, the man was no longer struggling. The little old lady that Cally had called 'Mrs. Herbert' looked towards the window just then, blood dripping down her chin and onto a ridiculous pink cardigan sweater. It was her eyes that scared Shelly into action, a milky filmy look to them, almost like they were blinded by cataracts, but as a cold shiver slid down her spine the blonde couldn't help but feel that the old woman was looking right at her. "Yeah…..okay," she stuttered, hastening towards the couch where Jessie and Mark still slept.
As Shelly moved to wake the others, Cally quickly moved to pull the curtains shut once more, but it was too late, they'd already been seen. The old woman led the charge, still covered in the blood of her victim. The others staggered to their feet and followed after her, running up to the window.
"Geezus! What the hell is wrong with those people?" Mark's horrified voice said from beside her, startling her.
"I don't know, but we need to get out of here," she replied, stepping back from the window as the crazy mob reached it and started pounding on it. "Come on!" she called, grapping his arm and trying to drag him away from the windows as the glass shattered.
"I'll bet you won't bitch about those ugly bars on the windows now," Mark answered, still staring towards the window in a sort of fascinated horror. He started moving with her though, as soon as the first two hands began clawing at the air between the bars, their owner growling furiously.
"We gotta get out of here," Cally said again, panic entering her voice now. "The windows on the front of the house are the only ones that still have those." Frantically she ran to the kitchen in search of all the keys that she'd hidden the night before, her own included.
She passed Shelly trying to shake Kurt awake in the bathroom and practically crashed straight into a yawning David as he stumbled through the kitchen door.
"Damn Cal, where's the fucking fire," he muttered, grabbing hold of her arms to keep them both from falling. Before she could reply his attention was drawl to the snarls and growls coming out of the other room. "When'd you get a dog?" he asked.
"It's not a dog, those are people and we need to get out of here," she uttered, shoving him aside.
"What the hell are you talking about? People? Those are fucking dogs dude. Are you still drunk or what?" he asked, still standing in the kitchen doorway watching as she slammed open cupboards in search of the keys.
"They're people, there's some crazy shit going on, and we need to get out of here," she answered, finding the Tupperware bowl with the keys and digging through them.
"Whatever," he muttered. Turning to go look for himself, he found his way blocked by the others. Mark was half carrying a still drunk Kurt, while Shelly and Jessie huddled together behind them.
"There're more of them out there now," Mark said, gesturing with his head back towards the other room where the snarls were getting louder. "Any luck with those keys."
David slowly turned back to Cally in the kitchen before looking at the faces of the others assembled in front of him. Either they were serious, or this was one hell of an elaborate joke they were playing on him.
"Got 'em. We'll take mine, it's in the garage so we won't have to dodge around those crazies out there," she said, triumphantly waving the keys in the air.
"No fucking way! You try to back out of that damn garage and you're gonna hit my new car!" David protested.
"Unless you want to find out firsthand how crazy those fucks are out there, we don't have a choice," Shelly cried, her voice bordering on hysteria.
"If it comes down to that I'll pay for the damages," Cally muttered. "Now let's get the hell out of here shall we?"
Leading the way into the garage, she flipped on the overhead light. In front of them sat a gleaming black H3, the gift she'd bought herself when her grandfather had handed over the reigns of his accounting firm to her three weeks ago. She'd rationalized that she needed something that made a statement. Something that said she was in control of a successful business. What said more than a green unfriendly, gas-guzzling behemoth of a vehicle like the H3? She'd been regretting her decision, but at that particular moment it was a thing of beauty.
"Hop in," she called, climbing behind the wheel. The others scrambled in after dumping Kurt's once again unconscious form into the back cargo area. David climbed in to ride shotgun, while Mark sat in the back seat with the girls.
The engine roared to life a split second before Cally hit the garage door opener and slammed the H3 into reverse. The small mob that had been growing outside the front window turned at the sound of the vehicle and started dashing towards it. With a hard crank of the wheel, Cally tried to avoid hitting David's little Mustang, but she still managed to clip the front end.
"Sonuvabitch, my car!" he yelled, just as the mob descended on them.
Cally floored it, making the tires spin as they swerved onto the grass, she hurried to straighten the wheel and they bumped their way through the yard to the street where they came to a jarring halt.
The view down the street didn't look much better than what they'd seen from the house. There were cars crashed up onto the sidewalks, people running, smoke billowing out of at least a half a dozen houses, and then the bodies. All over bodies and body parts littered the ground. Cally took it all in through the dazed stupor that had fallen over her.
"Oh my god! They're coming for us again! Move the damn car Cal!" her friends' terrified voices called from the back seat, jarring her back to reality. Quickly she shifted the vehicle into drive just as the mob from her house began pounding on and shaking the truck. She floored it, not seeing the old woman she'd called Mrs. Herbert stepping in front of them until it was too late. With a sickening, bone crushing, wet thud, the old woman's body bounced off the hood and rolled across the roof until it came to rest in the street. Looking back in the rearview mirror, Cally was horrified to see what was left of the old lady struggling to rise to its feet once more.
"Is everyone okay?" she asked, turning her eyes to the road.
"Please tell me that this is just some fucked up dream," Kurt's voice slurred from the cargo space. He had propped himself up and was looking out the back window at the mob still desperately chasing behind them, even as the truck pulled further and further away.
Ignoring him, Mark asked, "So what do we do now?"
"We find someplace safe," Cally replied, with way more confidence than she was feeling.
"Just where's that?" Jessie asked, clinging tightly to Mark's hand.
"There's got to be someplace safe around here, the whole city can't be like this."
"But what if it is?" Jessie demanded.
"We find an airfield; get Kurt sobered up and we fly north. My family's got a cabin in the middle of nowhere, closest neighbors are better than 5 miles away."
"And just where are we supposed to land this non-existent plane?" Shelly asked skeptically. Kurt wasn't even a licensed pilot yet, he hadn't ever even gone for a solo flight.
"The community airport, that's where he takes his lessons, there's got to be all kinds of stuff there," David declared, growing more confident with his idea.
"Look, even if Kurt was stone cold sober, there is no way in hell I'm getting onto any plane he's attempting to fly!" Shelly argued. "The man can barely drive a car without crashing it; I don't want to know what he can do with an airplane."
About 5 miles down the road, the street looked like a parking lot. There was a local transit bus swerved across two lanes, the cars behind it piled up. It looked like a few of them had tried to swerve into the lanes of the oncoming traffic, and just ended up crashing head-on. Much like in her neighborhood, Cally looked around at the bodies lying sprawled across cars and the road.
"We can't get through here," she said so softly it was barely even a whisper. The others looked around just as scared.
"It's all over the place," David said, pointing to a mob running between the cars, coming right towards them.
"Are they looters?" Mark asked, squinting his eyes to see better and wishing he hadn't left his glasses at home the night before. Damn near-sightedness.
"I don't think…." Cally started to reply until something threw itself up against the passenger side door. They all jumped, Shelly screaming in terror, as the thing began pounding on the door.
"Please help me! For the love of god let me in!" it cried.
"Open the door, Mark," Cally called out.
"Are you nuts? He's all covered and blood, like the rest of those things out there!" he yelled.
"I haven't heard them asking for help, now let him in!" she said, reaching for the lock switch herself.
As soon as he heard the click, the terrified man wrenched the door open and bounded inside. "You have to get out of here fast, they'll flip this whole thing over to get at you," he panted, pointing to the rapidly approaching mob. Cally didn't argue with him, just made a sort of u-turn and headed back the way they'd come.
"Who the hell are you?" David asked bluntly.
"Scott. Officer Daniel Scott," he panted.
"You're a cop," Shelly said, finally noticing the uniform through all the blood covering it. "Are you hurt?"
"What? No…no," he replied, absently swiping his hand down his blood covered torso. "My partner….one of those things….it got him, bit him right on the neck. Must have gotten the jugular the way the blood just shot out at me. I...I shot it, but it just kept coming 'til I landed one between its eyes. Next thing I know my partner's coming after me. I just ran, back to the car, but they were all over it….." he trailed off, his eyes taking on a distant look.
"What's going on out there?" Cally asked, jarring him back to the present.
"I don't know," he murmured. "Everyone's just gone mad."
David reached for the radio, flipping channels until a static filled voice finally came out of the speakers.
"I repeat, the bodies of the recently dead seem to be returning to life and attacking the living. Those who come into contact with these walking dead report bites as being the primary injuries, with those wounded becoming ill, some grievously ill, within a matter of minutes, sometimes hours. Officials have no comments on what may have caused the phenomena, but are encouraging residents to lock their doors and windows and not leave their homes."
"Anyone got any ideas?" Jessie asked. "Ones that don't involve suicidal thoughts like getting into plane that Kurt's supposed to fly," she added, looking pointedly at David as she did.
"Yeah, we still head north to his family's cabin," Cally announced. "Only we're driving there, not flying. Anyone who wants to argue can feel free to step out of the car any time they want."