A Bullet for the Dead
Johnny Chambers was contacted by Domanic Sanchez during his second year working at Raccoon City High School. He was a ninth grade school teacher recently married and wanting to raise a family. His lovely wife, Alexas, worked behind the counter at the pharmacy on Umbrella st. Their combined income restricted them to find an apartment in the low-rent district of the city. Money was tight and trying to raise a family, to have children, would only be possible if they moved in with Alexas' parents in Florida. Johnny hated those people and for good reason. Alexas had gotten pregnant once before they had left Florida but had yet to get married. Her mother had forced her to get an abortion without telling Johnny a word. When he finally found out the operation was already done. His baby was dead. Two months later they had moved to Racoon City as man and wife. Now the only way he would agree to move in with those people is if he were shot and carried there in a casket. They didn't make enough money to pay for all the hospital bills a pregnancy requires, unless they wanted debt to swallow them whole, but they made too much to get any financial help from the city, state, or government.
So Domanic Sanchez gave them another way.
A way they could raise a family and find happiness. The kind of happiness they had always been denied. Every couple of weeks a package would be droped off at the Feil home. A few days later that same package would be picked up by someone anonymous. It was simple. An extra two thousand a month. Simple until Jon found out what was in the package. Simple until Johnny got greedy.
"We just want to know why you did what you did." Domanic paced in front of Johnny as he sat nervously on the sofa. He wore a dark overcoat that hung down to the floor with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Whatever it is you think I did, I didn't."
"So we're the assholes here. All I know is that when the package was dropped off there were six kilos but now there is only four point five. Now maybe I don't know my math but that motherfucker sounds light to me. What did you do, sell to your students? Or did you snort that shit up yourself?" Domanic droped his arms to his sides when Peter walked back into the room still holding his gloc 9mm. "Where's the bitch?"
Peter unscrewed the silencer on the barrel of the gun before answering. "Taking a nap."
"Alexas!" Johnny yelled knowing the truth.
"She ain't gonna hear you, Johnny. She's got a bullet in her ear." He smiled down at him as tears began to fill the husbands eyes.
Domanic looked over at Peter tossing him the cell phone. "Call Ramos. See what the fuck we're suppose to do about this motherfucker."
He flipped open the cell phone dialing the number.
Johnny wiped the tears under his eye glasses trying not to expose the sorrow or the fear that sat like a lump in his stomach. He knew that selling those drugs for his own profit would be a mistake. And while sitting on that sofa watching the two men in front of him he knew he would soon be dead burning in the inferno of Hell for his sins. His flesh would blister as the hot flames danced on his carcass with the fire cooking his muscle and fat. If Satan did exsist than Johnny believed he belonged at the other end of his pitch-fork.
Domanic steped over to the radio sitting on a table in the corner of the room. He switched it on as Simon and Jose sung about The Sound of Silence.
"You listen to this old shit?"
Johnny was silent.
"I love it. Been listening to it ever since my daddy would play it for me on that old fucking turntable of his when I was a kid. Now I got me a collection of old shit. Old shit kids these days never even heard of before." He turned the nob raising the volume. "Hey, Johnny, you ever stick it to a virgin before? No, I bet you never have, sloppy seconds is more your style, right? I remember this one virgin bitch, I tore her fucking up. By the time I was done she bled a fucking river. All over my god damn silk sheets. Now that's a mess I could have done without. But, I'll tell ya, she ws one hell of a fuck. Dumb as a rock though. She loves Steven Segal movies and that right there shows you the lack of personality she has. I mean that motherfucker wouldn't know good action if it was spelled out for him. Chow Yun Fat, now that son-of-a-bitch could kick his ass any day of the week. John Woo, there's a guy who knows action. And I'm not talking about his American shit, I'm talking about Hong Kong movies. The Killer, Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, now those are fucking movies. None of this Under Siege 2 bullshit."
Peter hung the phone up handing it over to his partner. He pulled out his 9mm screwing the silencer back onto the barrel.
"So what did he say?"
"He said we gotta take whats left of the shit and get the fuck out of here. This afternoon we got ourselves a party over at Sam's, you wanna crash with us?"
"What time?"
He lowered the gun. "Four Post Meridiem."
"Sorry, Ramos' got me an appointment with one of his acquaintances at three. Something I'm not gonna be able to miss."
"Understood."
"So what about him?" Domanic motioned to Johnny still sitting on the purple sofa.
Peter raised his arm pulling the trigger twise. The bullets ripped through his ribcage piercing his beating heart. Johnny was dead before he had a chance to bleed.
"What about him?" Peter asked sarcasticly.
The Simon and Jose song ended on the stereo replaced with something by The Four Tops. Another one of Domanic favorites.
* * * * *
The hotel curtains were drawn diming the room from the afternoon sunlight outside. Two bodies were under the damp sheets their flesh pressed together in the most carnal way. They could taste each other as their lips touched with gaping maws. As Kayman pushed inside of the prostitute with his hand on her round breast he didn't notice the door open behind him. As he reached his climax he didn't notice the man with the dark overcoat step up next to the bed. As he collapsed on top of the prostitute exausted he didn't notice the Colt .45 pressed to the sheets. It wasn't until the bullet tore through the meat of his back and into the whore's belly that he realized he was dead. The second shot went into his neck painting the sheets red as the slug pierced the woman's chest.
Domanic put the gun into his jacket staring at the two cadavers that were still in a loving embrace. He steped over to the bar to pour himself a drink. Most of the liquor was gone and the glasses had all been used. Only half a bottle of gin was left. Domanic rinsed out a glass than poured the alcohol to the top with a splash of Coke. When he raised the drink to his dry lips he didn't notice the sheets begin to move. As the gin and Coke washed down his throat he didn't notice the two dead bodies rise off the bed shambling toward him.
* * * * *
The five men came into Sam's Jewelers each wearing a pair of dark sunglasses concealing their eyes. According to the clock on the wall it was four o'clock. They all wore black suits as if they were going to a funeral except one who had a biker jacket on that seemed to fit too small. There were only two customers in the jewelry store and three employees behind the glass counter. A security guard stood casually by the front door.
Peter steped up to one of the employees with smile on his broad face. She was a cute red head, no older than nineteen, with a name tag pinned to her blouse that spelled out Melissa. The other four men spread across the shop waiting for the sign.
"Can I help you?" Melissa asked.
"That's okay, I can help myself." He pulled the Gloc out of his jacket putting the barrel to her throat before pulling the trigger. She gurgled on the blood that filled her mouth spitting it out onto the glass counter. Peter turned to his right firing his gun at a second employee who stared at him in shock. He fell to the tile with an open wound seeping on his chest. Before the security guard could react to any of the shots he felt something hard against his crotch. Looking up he saw the man in the biker jacket.
"How are you doing?" He grinned.
"Please." The Desert Eagle exploded between his legs before he could let another word out. He droped to the floor with blood going down both sides of his pant legs. The guard felt the atrocious pain of the second bullet before he heard the shot. But the pain didn't last long.
Peter turned around to see Bava next to the dead security guard, the two customers were on the cold tile each with a bullet in their face. The other employee was dead somewhere behind the cash register. Rowe, Helm, and Deja were already smashing the glass cases filling their sports bags with diamond rings and saphire bracelets.
"Helm, check the office in the back. Bava, the restrooms." Peter shattered the case in front of him pulling out a pearl necklace.
Dan Kaye coward behind his desk with a phone to his ear listening to the officer on the other end telling him to stay calm. "You stay fucking calm, everybodies dead. Everybodies fucking dead!"
"You the manager?" A voice said.
Kaye looked up at the man dressed in the black suit standing above him with a 9mm Barretta. "Yes."
"Well, from where I stand it don't look like you're managing shit."
The cop on the other end of the phone line heard the shot before being disconnected.
Emily sat in the stall of the woman's restroom with her feet pulled up onto the seat. For some reason all she could think about was her dog, Twilight, alone in the backyard of her house. If anything happend to her Twilight would spend the rest of her life starving as her body became a sunken heap of dirty tangled furr.
The stall door smashed open as a biker reached in dragging Emily off the toilet. Her screams were unheard by anyone who would care. Bava slammed her face against the sink breaking her nose at the bridge causing blood to spray into the basin.
"Shut that fucking hole in your face before I make another."
But she couldn't. Her fear had taken over all of her senses and wouldn't let her stop screaming knowing that it was going to be the last sound she would ever make. Bava raised his gun putting one slug below her colar bone and another into one of her lungs. She began to fight for air as her lung began to fill with liquids. The last thing her vision allowed was Bava unbuckling his belt.
He leaned over the corpse spreading its legs apart as he reached under the short skirt for its panties. Pulling them off he stood back up raising the under garnments to his nose. Bava felt the auroma to be intoxicating. He unzipped his jeans pushing them down to his ankles accompanied by his stained boxers. Wrapping the body's legs around his waist he slid into the still warm meat of the carcass. Bava closed his eyes enjoying the unnatural sensation as he continued to move his hips like a whore.
Emily opened her eyes.
Helm walked out to the office back to the front of the shop. "We might have a problem."
"What is it?" Peter turned to face him.
"That fuck-nut in there was on the phone when I came in. I think he was talking to the pigs."
"Than I suggest we move it. Where's Bava?"
"Still in the restroom." Rowe said.
"Well, get his sorry ass out here."
Rowe hurried to the woman's restroom pushing the door open. The tile was slippery with oozing gore as if someone had spilled a bucket of chum.
"Holy Christ." In the far corner of the room Bava lay on the floor with his pants around his boots. His shirt was pulled up as a woman appeared to be burrying her face into his stomach eating his entrails like spaghetti. Rowe could see that she had two exit wounds on her back the size of two bleeding saucers. This woman should be dead.
She looked up at Rowe with a string of dripping meat hanging from her jaws. Her eyes had a glaze of stupidity covering the pupils as if she were no longer human but a raving animal. Hungry and insane.
Outside, at the front of the jewelry store, Rowe could hear gun shots and the horrid screams of the damned. He let the door swing shut walking nervously toward the commotion with his twelve gauge.
Deja had fallen onto one of the glass counters as the dead security guard devoured the flesh on his meaty bicep. The red head employee chewed the fat that hung over his belt with human liquids gushing down her maw.
Behind Rowe the corpse of the woman in the restroom came shambling out. She reached toward him grasping his shoulders as her teeth sunk into the back of his neck. He screamed as the excrusiating pain echoed deep into his bones. With the butt of his shotgun he slammed it against her ribcage pushing her away. But that didn't stop the creature. Rowe turned around holding up the Remington as she came at him again. He pulled the trigger watching the buck shots rip though her neck decapatating her. The woman's severed head hit the floor with a wet THUMP rolling toward the restoom door as it opened again.
"Bava?"
He stood there with his intestines hanging from the gapping hole that use to be his stomach. Blood seeped down his bare legs and over his exposed erection. Rowe pulled the trigger again with the barrel pressed against Bava's nose.
"In the head!" Peter yelled. "They won't go down unless you get the fuckers in the head!"
"Rowe, move your ass!" Helm shouted toward the back as he pushed the front door open into the afternoon sunlight. Peter rushed out after him.
Rowe ran into the front, shotgun in hand, to find the carnage left behind. Bits of flesh on the broken glass counters and pools of blood on the checkered tile floor. The revolution caused bile to bubble up into his throat.
In the van parked outside Peter and Helm watched Rowe hurry through the door of Sam's Jewelers. They could see that he had been biten.
* * * * *
Rowe rested on the couch pressing a wet cloth onto his seeping wound. His brother sat next to him on the floor watching Helm pace the room. The drive to Peter's apartment was without circumstance, however, the radio in the van spoke of horrifying inncidences all around Raccoon City and along the coast of Maine. This wasn't an isolated occurance.
It was everywhere.
"What the hell is happening?" Helm shouted with extreme fury in his voice.
"I don't know."
"Well, there's got to be some kind of explanation."
"Maybe it's some kind of virus." Peter suggested.
"A virus? That's a crock of shit. Ain't no virus I ever heard of that lets a man take a bullet, no, several fucking bullets in the chest and he just keeps on coming. The motherfucker was dead but he kept on coming."
"That don't mean shit. Just because you ain't never heard of it don't mean it can't happen because it is happening. No one heard of AIDS, either, until some motherfucker dropped dead of it. No one hears of anything until it happens and it's happening now."
"What about him? Do we take him to a hospital?"
"No, if we take him to a hospital he's fucked. The pigs will be all over his ass."
"Peter, you took his temperature yourself, it's up to 108, I think he needs a doctor."
"Brett's already on that fucking island and I'll be god damned if I'm gonna have two brothers locked in a cell."
"We're already damned. Besides would you rather have him dead?" Helm stepped over to the window pulling the curtain aside. A boy was tending to the knee high grass pushing a lawnmower through it. An old man was walking up the street taking an afternoon stroll. The word wasn't out yet. It could have been a day unlike any other day. Peaceful, without worry.
But there was worry.
And no one was safe.
"Rowe?" Peter muttered under his breath. Using two fingers he checked his pulse but could find none. Helm turned to look at him.
"Is he gone?"
Peter rose to his feet turning toward Helm. "I wasn't there for him like I should have been. All of our lives I protected him. I made sure that he never got into it too deep. I didn't want this for him. I didn't want this life for him. But there was nothing I could do, he looked up to me. He wanted to make me proud and prove that he could make it in my world. Our father pulled me and Brett into this world but he died before he could get Rowe. So it wasn't him this time, it was me. I did this to him."
"You didn't do this to him. It was one of those things out there that did it to him."
"That's not how I look at it."
"There is no other way to look at it. It just is, plain and simple."
Rowe began to stir on the couch. He began to resurrect like Lazurous. His torso rose as he looked over at Helm with that stupid glaze over his eyes.
"Jesus." Helm pulled out his Magnum .44.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Peter asked.
"What has to be done."
Peter glanced down at his little brother as Helm fired the gun. Blood sprayed on the wall behind him as the bullet passed though his grey matter. Rowe fell back onto the couch a heap of rott.
"You killed my brother!"
"No I didn't. That bite killed your brother. He was already dead."
Peter took out the 9mm inside of his coat.
"And so are you." He pulled the trigger shooting Helm in the head.
Outside the old man, dead for nearly ten hours, reached for the teenager mowing the lawn. The boy pushed the festering carcass to the ground than lifted up the lawnmower. He dropped it onto the face of the corpse as the blades tore past his skull into his brain splashing crimson gore all over the freshly cut grass.
That was how it started.
When the insanity began to boil over into the damnation of our lives.
That was the day the dead began to walk.
THE END
Johnny Chambers was contacted by Domanic Sanchez during his second year working at Raccoon City High School. He was a ninth grade school teacher recently married and wanting to raise a family. His lovely wife, Alexas, worked behind the counter at the pharmacy on Umbrella st. Their combined income restricted them to find an apartment in the low-rent district of the city. Money was tight and trying to raise a family, to have children, would only be possible if they moved in with Alexas' parents in Florida. Johnny hated those people and for good reason. Alexas had gotten pregnant once before they had left Florida but had yet to get married. Her mother had forced her to get an abortion without telling Johnny a word. When he finally found out the operation was already done. His baby was dead. Two months later they had moved to Racoon City as man and wife. Now the only way he would agree to move in with those people is if he were shot and carried there in a casket. They didn't make enough money to pay for all the hospital bills a pregnancy requires, unless they wanted debt to swallow them whole, but they made too much to get any financial help from the city, state, or government.
So Domanic Sanchez gave them another way.
A way they could raise a family and find happiness. The kind of happiness they had always been denied. Every couple of weeks a package would be droped off at the Feil home. A few days later that same package would be picked up by someone anonymous. It was simple. An extra two thousand a month. Simple until Jon found out what was in the package. Simple until Johnny got greedy.
"We just want to know why you did what you did." Domanic paced in front of Johnny as he sat nervously on the sofa. He wore a dark overcoat that hung down to the floor with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Whatever it is you think I did, I didn't."
"So we're the assholes here. All I know is that when the package was dropped off there were six kilos but now there is only four point five. Now maybe I don't know my math but that motherfucker sounds light to me. What did you do, sell to your students? Or did you snort that shit up yourself?" Domanic droped his arms to his sides when Peter walked back into the room still holding his gloc 9mm. "Where's the bitch?"
Peter unscrewed the silencer on the barrel of the gun before answering. "Taking a nap."
"Alexas!" Johnny yelled knowing the truth.
"She ain't gonna hear you, Johnny. She's got a bullet in her ear." He smiled down at him as tears began to fill the husbands eyes.
Domanic looked over at Peter tossing him the cell phone. "Call Ramos. See what the fuck we're suppose to do about this motherfucker."
He flipped open the cell phone dialing the number.
Johnny wiped the tears under his eye glasses trying not to expose the sorrow or the fear that sat like a lump in his stomach. He knew that selling those drugs for his own profit would be a mistake. And while sitting on that sofa watching the two men in front of him he knew he would soon be dead burning in the inferno of Hell for his sins. His flesh would blister as the hot flames danced on his carcass with the fire cooking his muscle and fat. If Satan did exsist than Johnny believed he belonged at the other end of his pitch-fork.
Domanic steped over to the radio sitting on a table in the corner of the room. He switched it on as Simon and Jose sung about The Sound of Silence.
"You listen to this old shit?"
Johnny was silent.
"I love it. Been listening to it ever since my daddy would play it for me on that old fucking turntable of his when I was a kid. Now I got me a collection of old shit. Old shit kids these days never even heard of before." He turned the nob raising the volume. "Hey, Johnny, you ever stick it to a virgin before? No, I bet you never have, sloppy seconds is more your style, right? I remember this one virgin bitch, I tore her fucking up. By the time I was done she bled a fucking river. All over my god damn silk sheets. Now that's a mess I could have done without. But, I'll tell ya, she ws one hell of a fuck. Dumb as a rock though. She loves Steven Segal movies and that right there shows you the lack of personality she has. I mean that motherfucker wouldn't know good action if it was spelled out for him. Chow Yun Fat, now that son-of-a-bitch could kick his ass any day of the week. John Woo, there's a guy who knows action. And I'm not talking about his American shit, I'm talking about Hong Kong movies. The Killer, Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, now those are fucking movies. None of this Under Siege 2 bullshit."
Peter hung the phone up handing it over to his partner. He pulled out his 9mm screwing the silencer back onto the barrel.
"So what did he say?"
"He said we gotta take whats left of the shit and get the fuck out of here. This afternoon we got ourselves a party over at Sam's, you wanna crash with us?"
"What time?"
He lowered the gun. "Four Post Meridiem."
"Sorry, Ramos' got me an appointment with one of his acquaintances at three. Something I'm not gonna be able to miss."
"Understood."
"So what about him?" Domanic motioned to Johnny still sitting on the purple sofa.
Peter raised his arm pulling the trigger twise. The bullets ripped through his ribcage piercing his beating heart. Johnny was dead before he had a chance to bleed.
"What about him?" Peter asked sarcasticly.
The Simon and Jose song ended on the stereo replaced with something by The Four Tops. Another one of Domanic favorites.
* * * * *
The hotel curtains were drawn diming the room from the afternoon sunlight outside. Two bodies were under the damp sheets their flesh pressed together in the most carnal way. They could taste each other as their lips touched with gaping maws. As Kayman pushed inside of the prostitute with his hand on her round breast he didn't notice the door open behind him. As he reached his climax he didn't notice the man with the dark overcoat step up next to the bed. As he collapsed on top of the prostitute exausted he didn't notice the Colt .45 pressed to the sheets. It wasn't until the bullet tore through the meat of his back and into the whore's belly that he realized he was dead. The second shot went into his neck painting the sheets red as the slug pierced the woman's chest.
Domanic put the gun into his jacket staring at the two cadavers that were still in a loving embrace. He steped over to the bar to pour himself a drink. Most of the liquor was gone and the glasses had all been used. Only half a bottle of gin was left. Domanic rinsed out a glass than poured the alcohol to the top with a splash of Coke. When he raised the drink to his dry lips he didn't notice the sheets begin to move. As the gin and Coke washed down his throat he didn't notice the two dead bodies rise off the bed shambling toward him.
* * * * *
The five men came into Sam's Jewelers each wearing a pair of dark sunglasses concealing their eyes. According to the clock on the wall it was four o'clock. They all wore black suits as if they were going to a funeral except one who had a biker jacket on that seemed to fit too small. There were only two customers in the jewelry store and three employees behind the glass counter. A security guard stood casually by the front door.
Peter steped up to one of the employees with smile on his broad face. She was a cute red head, no older than nineteen, with a name tag pinned to her blouse that spelled out Melissa. The other four men spread across the shop waiting for the sign.
"Can I help you?" Melissa asked.
"That's okay, I can help myself." He pulled the Gloc out of his jacket putting the barrel to her throat before pulling the trigger. She gurgled on the blood that filled her mouth spitting it out onto the glass counter. Peter turned to his right firing his gun at a second employee who stared at him in shock. He fell to the tile with an open wound seeping on his chest. Before the security guard could react to any of the shots he felt something hard against his crotch. Looking up he saw the man in the biker jacket.
"How are you doing?" He grinned.
"Please." The Desert Eagle exploded between his legs before he could let another word out. He droped to the floor with blood going down both sides of his pant legs. The guard felt the atrocious pain of the second bullet before he heard the shot. But the pain didn't last long.
Peter turned around to see Bava next to the dead security guard, the two customers were on the cold tile each with a bullet in their face. The other employee was dead somewhere behind the cash register. Rowe, Helm, and Deja were already smashing the glass cases filling their sports bags with diamond rings and saphire bracelets.
"Helm, check the office in the back. Bava, the restrooms." Peter shattered the case in front of him pulling out a pearl necklace.
Dan Kaye coward behind his desk with a phone to his ear listening to the officer on the other end telling him to stay calm. "You stay fucking calm, everybodies dead. Everybodies fucking dead!"
"You the manager?" A voice said.
Kaye looked up at the man dressed in the black suit standing above him with a 9mm Barretta. "Yes."
"Well, from where I stand it don't look like you're managing shit."
The cop on the other end of the phone line heard the shot before being disconnected.
Emily sat in the stall of the woman's restroom with her feet pulled up onto the seat. For some reason all she could think about was her dog, Twilight, alone in the backyard of her house. If anything happend to her Twilight would spend the rest of her life starving as her body became a sunken heap of dirty tangled furr.
The stall door smashed open as a biker reached in dragging Emily off the toilet. Her screams were unheard by anyone who would care. Bava slammed her face against the sink breaking her nose at the bridge causing blood to spray into the basin.
"Shut that fucking hole in your face before I make another."
But she couldn't. Her fear had taken over all of her senses and wouldn't let her stop screaming knowing that it was going to be the last sound she would ever make. Bava raised his gun putting one slug below her colar bone and another into one of her lungs. She began to fight for air as her lung began to fill with liquids. The last thing her vision allowed was Bava unbuckling his belt.
He leaned over the corpse spreading its legs apart as he reached under the short skirt for its panties. Pulling them off he stood back up raising the under garnments to his nose. Bava felt the auroma to be intoxicating. He unzipped his jeans pushing them down to his ankles accompanied by his stained boxers. Wrapping the body's legs around his waist he slid into the still warm meat of the carcass. Bava closed his eyes enjoying the unnatural sensation as he continued to move his hips like a whore.
Emily opened her eyes.
Helm walked out to the office back to the front of the shop. "We might have a problem."
"What is it?" Peter turned to face him.
"That fuck-nut in there was on the phone when I came in. I think he was talking to the pigs."
"Than I suggest we move it. Where's Bava?"
"Still in the restroom." Rowe said.
"Well, get his sorry ass out here."
Rowe hurried to the woman's restroom pushing the door open. The tile was slippery with oozing gore as if someone had spilled a bucket of chum.
"Holy Christ." In the far corner of the room Bava lay on the floor with his pants around his boots. His shirt was pulled up as a woman appeared to be burrying her face into his stomach eating his entrails like spaghetti. Rowe could see that she had two exit wounds on her back the size of two bleeding saucers. This woman should be dead.
She looked up at Rowe with a string of dripping meat hanging from her jaws. Her eyes had a glaze of stupidity covering the pupils as if she were no longer human but a raving animal. Hungry and insane.
Outside, at the front of the jewelry store, Rowe could hear gun shots and the horrid screams of the damned. He let the door swing shut walking nervously toward the commotion with his twelve gauge.
Deja had fallen onto one of the glass counters as the dead security guard devoured the flesh on his meaty bicep. The red head employee chewed the fat that hung over his belt with human liquids gushing down her maw.
Behind Rowe the corpse of the woman in the restroom came shambling out. She reached toward him grasping his shoulders as her teeth sunk into the back of his neck. He screamed as the excrusiating pain echoed deep into his bones. With the butt of his shotgun he slammed it against her ribcage pushing her away. But that didn't stop the creature. Rowe turned around holding up the Remington as she came at him again. He pulled the trigger watching the buck shots rip though her neck decapatating her. The woman's severed head hit the floor with a wet THUMP rolling toward the restoom door as it opened again.
"Bava?"
He stood there with his intestines hanging from the gapping hole that use to be his stomach. Blood seeped down his bare legs and over his exposed erection. Rowe pulled the trigger again with the barrel pressed against Bava's nose.
"In the head!" Peter yelled. "They won't go down unless you get the fuckers in the head!"
"Rowe, move your ass!" Helm shouted toward the back as he pushed the front door open into the afternoon sunlight. Peter rushed out after him.
Rowe ran into the front, shotgun in hand, to find the carnage left behind. Bits of flesh on the broken glass counters and pools of blood on the checkered tile floor. The revolution caused bile to bubble up into his throat.
In the van parked outside Peter and Helm watched Rowe hurry through the door of Sam's Jewelers. They could see that he had been biten.
* * * * *
Rowe rested on the couch pressing a wet cloth onto his seeping wound. His brother sat next to him on the floor watching Helm pace the room. The drive to Peter's apartment was without circumstance, however, the radio in the van spoke of horrifying inncidences all around Raccoon City and along the coast of Maine. This wasn't an isolated occurance.
It was everywhere.
"What the hell is happening?" Helm shouted with extreme fury in his voice.
"I don't know."
"Well, there's got to be some kind of explanation."
"Maybe it's some kind of virus." Peter suggested.
"A virus? That's a crock of shit. Ain't no virus I ever heard of that lets a man take a bullet, no, several fucking bullets in the chest and he just keeps on coming. The motherfucker was dead but he kept on coming."
"That don't mean shit. Just because you ain't never heard of it don't mean it can't happen because it is happening. No one heard of AIDS, either, until some motherfucker dropped dead of it. No one hears of anything until it happens and it's happening now."
"What about him? Do we take him to a hospital?"
"No, if we take him to a hospital he's fucked. The pigs will be all over his ass."
"Peter, you took his temperature yourself, it's up to 108, I think he needs a doctor."
"Brett's already on that fucking island and I'll be god damned if I'm gonna have two brothers locked in a cell."
"We're already damned. Besides would you rather have him dead?" Helm stepped over to the window pulling the curtain aside. A boy was tending to the knee high grass pushing a lawnmower through it. An old man was walking up the street taking an afternoon stroll. The word wasn't out yet. It could have been a day unlike any other day. Peaceful, without worry.
But there was worry.
And no one was safe.
"Rowe?" Peter muttered under his breath. Using two fingers he checked his pulse but could find none. Helm turned to look at him.
"Is he gone?"
Peter rose to his feet turning toward Helm. "I wasn't there for him like I should have been. All of our lives I protected him. I made sure that he never got into it too deep. I didn't want this for him. I didn't want this life for him. But there was nothing I could do, he looked up to me. He wanted to make me proud and prove that he could make it in my world. Our father pulled me and Brett into this world but he died before he could get Rowe. So it wasn't him this time, it was me. I did this to him."
"You didn't do this to him. It was one of those things out there that did it to him."
"That's not how I look at it."
"There is no other way to look at it. It just is, plain and simple."
Rowe began to stir on the couch. He began to resurrect like Lazurous. His torso rose as he looked over at Helm with that stupid glaze over his eyes.
"Jesus." Helm pulled out his Magnum .44.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Peter asked.
"What has to be done."
Peter glanced down at his little brother as Helm fired the gun. Blood sprayed on the wall behind him as the bullet passed though his grey matter. Rowe fell back onto the couch a heap of rott.
"You killed my brother!"
"No I didn't. That bite killed your brother. He was already dead."
Peter took out the 9mm inside of his coat.
"And so are you." He pulled the trigger shooting Helm in the head.
Outside the old man, dead for nearly ten hours, reached for the teenager mowing the lawn. The boy pushed the festering carcass to the ground than lifted up the lawnmower. He dropped it onto the face of the corpse as the blades tore past his skull into his brain splashing crimson gore all over the freshly cut grass.
That was how it started.
When the insanity began to boil over into the damnation of our lives.
That was the day the dead began to walk.
THE END