After I found Melvin, I disposed of the dead bodies by shutting them in the freezer in the back. I did not want the kid to see them anymore.
Melvin and me sat down at one of the restaurant booths, and watched the rain pour down outside. He was watching the droplets on the yellow slide, where he had been hiding, but I was searching the horizon for any zombies. I took a deep sigh while burying my head in my palms. The kid looked back at me and touched my shirt sleeve (a plain white T-shirt I got from one of the dead bodies). I picked my head up to look at him.
"It'll be all right." he told me.
We both looked outside at about the same time. The sun was setting, but forming a faint silhouette in the distance, was a man. Is he undead or alive? I thought. I told the boy to hide up under the table, and he obeyed. The man was dragging his feet across the pavement of the road. A zombie!
As the man came closer, I could see that he was only weak, and not a zombie. An old, black man in his late 50s wearing a suit and tie. He was in the parking lot and still dragging his feet. I looked around to see if those three zombies who tried to attack were around. They weren't. That was a reason to disassemble the stack of chairs in front of the door. The man stood behind the entrance with a blank expression on his face. Melvin helped me. We sat the chairs aside, and opened up the door to him.
The man came in without a care in the world. He didn't say a word until he sat at down at the nearest booth. Me and Melvin looked at one another and sat across from him. He slid off the first layer of his light tan suit and relaxed. The black man did not even bother to look at us.
"Where you'll from?" he asked as with his eyes closed.
"I live right here in Buckville. Melvin, here, told me that he lives up in Milton." I responded.
"So you aren't that boy's father?" he asked me with intrigue.
"No. I met him a couple of hours ago."
Later on that night, Melvin yawned and was getting sleepy. I couldn't find him any blanket, so me and the other man put two tables together. The black man put the first layer of his suit on the table. The boy slept on that. He hadn't slept since the night before the zombie attack.
Me and the man took a walk around McDonalds. He told me that his name didn't matter when he felt death at his doorstep. We both wanted to talk, but didn't know where to start.
I stopped for a second, and then whispered so I would not wake Melvin up, "What do you know about this thing that's going around?"
"Not much. I was preaching a message on repentance an the 2012 phenomenon when all of the sudden, one of those things came bustin' in and started biting folks. Only by the power of God was I able to get away."
"What happened after that?"
"I led some of the injured down into a nearby wheat field, and crouched down. When they died…however…they-" The man stopped as if he had a lump in his throat.
"What? What happened when they died?"
The black man looked up at me, and said, "They didn't stay dead, son, they came back to life. I thought it was a miracle, but then one of them growled at me, and tried to nip at me. All of the injured turned into zombies-like people. I hid from them in the vast fields of wheat. They left. I had my cell phone with me, and started getting calls from other spiritual advisers that the same thing was happening to them in places like Chicago, Philly, New York-"
My heart skipped a beat. I interrupted him. "New York?"
"Ya, son, that place was hit pretty bad. Why?"
"My sister was up in New York to care for our sick mother. Our mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer not too long ago."
The black man sighed put his hand on my shoulder. "Then they are probably dead or undead by now. I'm sorry for your loss."
I shrugged his hand off of my shoulder in anger, and walked off. I knew deep down in my heart that they were still alive. Both of them.
I paced around behind the counter of the restaurant. Thinking of my family and all that they were probably going through. My thoughts were shattered when I heard a banging sound coming from the freezer. The bang was loud enough to wake up Melvin. The old man didn't hear a thing. Melvin got up and came over to me, and held his breath. We were side by side, listening for any other noises. The only sound I could hear was the slight pitter-patter of the rain. BOOM! Even the old man heard that one. He ran over to me as fast as an old man can. All three of us walked quietly to the freezer.
"Who did you put in there?" the old man asked me.
"The dead."
"Well I guess they aren't dead anymore."
I went towards the door, trying not to think about the zombie I knew was certainly behind it. I looked over onto one of the metal counters beside me. A knife was on the table. I heard the sound of someone cocking back a gun. When I turned around, I saw the old man with a handgun, pointing it at the main entrance. He must've had that in his suit somewhere, I thought.
"You forgot to block up the doors. We have company." he told me.
When I looked to see what he was talking about, an army of zombies came slowly towards the double doors. They had found us.