World of Dead | Vol. 1 | Issue 4 Read online

  Issue 4

  “Mom, I’m going to drive,” Kyra said. Her mom had pulled their Jeep over after driving through a herd of the infected. They were finally safe enough to assess the damage and it was not good. Karen had been bitten so hard that it fractured her left forearm. The monster took a bite out so big that Karen was losing a lot of blood and fast.

  She began to cry as the pain started to overwhelm her. Karen was so pumped on the adrenaline of survival that she hadn’t even noticed the immense pain coming from her left arm. It hit her hard on the side of the road as Kyra helped her into the passenger seat.

  Kyra opened the back door, where her baby sister Kassidy and Jason’s young daughter Sara were both seated, crying heavily from all of the commotion. Kyra quickly grabbed a shirt from her backpack and closed the back door.

  “Let me see your arm,” she said. Karen offered her forearm with a cry of pain. They didn’t have much time and Kyra knew it. The crying from the babies in the back would draw attention to them quickly. Kyra took her mothers arm and tied the shirt around the wound. She squeezed the knot as tight as she possibly could, causing Karen to cry out in pain. “I’m sorry, mom.”

  Karen found herself leaned over, sobbing from the immense pain that she was in, but she understood what her daughter was doing. She cried, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I need you to untie my shoe and pull the lace out.”

  “What? Why?” Kyra asked.

  “Just do it, please,” Karen replied softly. She was out of breath from crying so heavily. Kyra did as asked and reached down, untied her mother’s right shoe lace, and pulled it from the grooves. Her mother continued to explain, “Tie it around my bicep as tight as you can. We need to slow the bleeding down.”

  Kyra understood what her mother was getting at finally and did as she was asked. As tight as she could possibly manage, Kyra tied the shoelace around the upper part of her mother’s bicep in hopes that it would slow down the arteries from pumping blood out of her mother’s wound. Her mother didn’t react much to the process as she was beginning to feel the exhaustion hit her.

  Kyra closed the passenger door and made her way to the driver side. Strapping herself in, Kyra was just about to press the button that would start the ignition when her mother softly grabbed her arm. She looked over at her mother, who’s eyes were fading into unconsciousness.

  “I need to tell you something,” Karen, ever so softly, said to her daughter. Kyra shook her head and refused. She grabbed her mother’s arm and placed it back into her mother’s lap before turning back and starting the ignition.

  “You need to rest,” Kyra answered, but her mother had already fallen asleep. Kyra looked at the steering wheel and felt the smooth rubber texture in her hands. She was doing everything she could to not break down right then and there. Then, suddenly she remembered that they needed to begin driving.

  The dark trees moved by effortlessly as Kyra drove along the empty road. The constant curves and turns around the trees calmed the children in the back down until, finally, they fell asleep. Although Kyra knew that the lake house was located in upstate New York, navigating through the woods with no map or phone was difficult for the sixteen-year-old. The Global Union had a requirement that all individuals must be eighteen years of age in order to test for a driver’s license. Therefore, Kyra had no need to know the roads of New York, especially not the roads of upstate New York.

  Kyra followed the road through the darkness and eventually found herself driving through a small town called Blue Mountain Lake. It was a place that she had heard of, but Kyra couldn’t be sure that she had ever actually been there. Her father and mother always brought them up to the lake house from the other direction. Blue Mountain Lake wasn’t showing Kyra any promise either. All that she could see was more darkness. Kyra’s shoulders sunk a little bit as she began to realize just how alone they might actually be.

  “I hope that we find something soon,” Kyra said, softly, to herself.

  “Follow the signs that say Albany,” Karen managed to get out. The sound from her mother frightened Kyra, as she was expecting to be the only one awake at that point.

  “Mom,” Kyra exhaled, “You scared me. You need to be…”

  “Stop telling me what to do,” Karen argued back. Kyra quickly looked over, shocked at her mom’s response, to find her mother smiling at her. Through the pain and exhaustion, Karen said, “I want to watch my daughter drive before I die.”

  “Stop it,” Kyra said, “You’re not going to die.”

  Karen shifted her body so that it rested with her facing Kyra. She took a deep breath, spending most of her train of thought on ignoring the pain in her arm, and said, “Do you remember your first day of high school?”

  “Mom,” Kyra resisted, “Please rest.”

  “You were so nervous and you had no idea what to wear,” Karen continued. Kyra, who was trying to focus on the road, didn’t say anything. Secretly, however, it was because she didn’t want to have that conversation, but Karen didn’t care. Karen was going to enjoy her last moments with her daughter. So, she continued, “I helped you pick out a nice dress that I thought would make a good impression on your teachers and classmates, but you argued with me. You told me that nobody wears dresses like that to high school anymore and that this wasn’t the 2010’s.”

  “Yeah,” Kyra said softly. She smiled softly as she, too, remembered her first day of high school. It wasn’t the best day of her life, but it also wasn’t anywhere near the worst. Kyra said, “The 2010’s didn’t have the best fashion sense.”

  “You should’ve seen the early 2000’s,” Karen laughed, “When I was growing up, dear, everything was about jeans and skin. People were wearing jean everything: jean pants, jean jackets, even jean hats. And some of the guys didn’t know how to wear their jean pants. Some of them had their pants sagging to their knees.”

  Kyra laughed, “I’m glad that I didn’t grow up around that time.”

  Karen smiled, “It may not have been pretty, but when I was five or six, life was much simpler.”

  “What do you mean?” Kyra asked. Her mother had drawn her in and now she wanted more. Kyra had never heard this much about her mother’s past.

  “The internet was just becoming popular with Facebook and Twitter connecting people on a worldwide basis. Technology was improving everyday. There was the first ever smartphone, flatscreen televisions, and YouTube. Who could forget about YouTube?” Karen said, laughing as she reminisced on the past.

  “What is YouTube?” Kyra asked.

  Karen rolled her eyes and smiled as she thought about the good-ole-days. She said, “YouTube was this website where you could post videos and watch videos for free. At the time, it was really cool because we could use it to listen to our favorite songs whenever we wanted to. Some people would make these goofy videos and you could sit there laughing at them all day long.”

  “What happened to all of that stuff?” Kyra asked, “I’ve never heard of any of this.”

  “Well,” Karen replied as she thought about the best way to explain it, “I suppose that it’s probably still there. The internet really faded away after the Battle of Earth happened. Our whole way of life changed. People became too busy to worry about entertainment. When I was in high school, there would be ten different movies playing in the movie theater at any given time.”

  “Ten?” Kyra said, shocked, “How do you have ten different movies playing at once?”

  Karen laughed loudly, “Movie theaters! There used to be a place where you could go, and buy tickets, to watch the new and upcoming movies.”

  Kyra was completely mind-blown at the concept. She was at a loss for words. Every time Kyra ever needed to
watch a movie, she did so on the television. All of the new movies were directly distributed to households for purchase right in their homes. For Kyra, it had always been like that.

  “Why?” Kyra asked, “I don’t understand how all of that just goes away.”

  Karen then began to remember the bad parts of her childhood as well and, suddenly, the pain began to come back to her. Karen’s arm burned and throbbed as she winced from the pain. It felt like somebody was pouring boiling hot water on her skin, if she had skin there anymore, of course.

  “Mom!” Kyra said as she began to panic, “Are you okay?”

  Karen fought the pain and said, “I’m alright. Focus on the road.”

  “We need to get you some help,” Kyra responded. She drove past a sign on the road that read, ALBANY 114. Her panic really started to set it. That was another two hours just to get to Albany and then Kyra knew that Albany was another two hours away from the city.

  Karen reached over with her good arm and touched her daughter on the wrist. Kyra looked over and her mother said, “You just get us there safely. I’m not going anywhere yet.”

  The exhaustion reigned over Karen and she relaxed her head on the seat. Kyra wanted to scream and shout. She wanted to let out her frustration with being so far away from anybody that could help them, but she knew that she couldn’t. That little voice inside her, despite everything she had seen so far, was still telling her to keep her cool.

  Kyra pushed through the tears that were forming in her eyes and focused on the road. Every curve, sign, or even tree wasn’t passing by without Kyra’s eyes hitting in. She needed to make sure that they were going to get there. She promised that she would keep her family safe and she wasn’t going to let that promise be broken.

  Time seemed to move a little quicker with Kyra’s mind so focused on everything. Before she knew it, forty-five minutes had passed by and Kyra was rolling up on another small town called North Creek. Kyra didn’t think much of it and planned on driving straight through North Creek, but then the low fuel light clicked on.

  Kyra looked over at her mother, who was still passed out, and then she looked back at the babies who were also unconscious from their rough day. Kyra wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but she knew that they needed to syphon some gasoline. She pulled the Jeep onto a side road and looked for an abandoned vehicle that hadn’t been tampered with. The pitch black parking lots and roads didn’t help her out much, however, and she found herself circling with no idea of what to do.

  Finally, Kyra decided to stop in a parking lot and look around. There were a few abandoned cars in the parking lot and all three of them were gasoline users, but that didn’t answer the question on how to syphon the gasoline out of them. Kyra was stuck. She needed to know how to do it, but her mother was asleep and really shouldn’t be getting up to do anything.

  Unsure of what to do, Kyra turned to head back to the Jeep, but as she did so she happened to notice something out of the corner of her eye. There was a fourth vehicle in the parking lot, hidden in the back corner. It was a smaller sedan, but what caught Kyra’s eye was that the driver side door was open.

  Kyra felt determined. She opened the back door of their Jeep and pulled a tire iron out to use as a weapon. Her mindset was that if the door was opened, maybe somebody got separated from their vehicle and it would have the keys still inside. They could swap vehicles and make to Albany before having to look for another one. The only concern in Kyra’s mind; is whatever separated them from their vehicle still lurking?

  As she approached the vehicle, Kyra began to smell the stench and the closer that she got the more she realized what had actually happened. The vehicle had it’s rear hidden in an alley on the side of convenience store. The trunk was left open, as the driver side door was, and laying face down in the driver side seat was the body of a man. Kyra turned away to catch her breath before taking another look.

  The man looked as if he was trying to pull himself into the vehicle while he was being attacked by the monsters that Kyra herself had become too familiar with. The man’s legs had been gnawed down to the bone all the way up his thighs and into his stomach. Really, there was nothing left of him except a rotting carcass. His face wasn’t even identifiable anymore.

  Kyra, preparing herself for the worst, snuck around the side of the vehicle and very slowly peaked into the trunk. What she found almost knocked her off of her feet. Inside the trunk were two bags, probably the man’s clothes and supplies, and four two-gallon gas cans.

  Looking around to see if anybody, or anything, was near, Kyra reached down and grabbed two of the gas cans and began to move back towards the Jeep. But then, as another thought began to cross her mind, she stopped and set the cans on the ground. Kyra turned and looked at the vehicle once again as she realized something.

  Kyra did her best to ignore the horrible stench of the rotting flesh as she approached the driver side door. She leaned over the legs of the carcass as she peaked into the cabin of the vehicle. Kyra was looking to see if the keys of the vehicle were in the ignition and she found that they were not. As she began to pull away, however, she saw them.

  The keys weren’t in the ignition of the vehicle because they were in the hand of the man. The man’s right hand was rested in an upward position as it lay on the center console of the car. The keys to the vehicle were stuck to his hand because the man had put his pointer finger through the ring of the keys.

  Kyra reached and grabbed the keys from the corpses hand, but just as she was beginning to pull them off of the finger where they rested, Kyra was stopped by something. The rotting skin that was left on the bone was beginning to peel off with the ring as it came. The sight of which was enough to make Kyra feel sick along with the stench and the overall scene of blood and tissue.

  In Kyra’s mind, however, this was important. She needed to find out how much gas was in this vehicle because if it was enough to get them to Albany, then Kyra could refill the tank using the four cans of gas in the trunk and they would have enough to get themselves to the city. She had to push through the disgust of the situation.

  “It’s just a dead body,” Kyra said to herself, “You’ve seen plenty of dead bodies in the last couple of days, right?”

  She slowly pulled the key from the man’s finger, tearing off the remaining flesh with it. Kyra shivered as she watched it happen, but she kept whatever food she had in her stomach where it should be. She shook the keys to try and rid it of the flesh that stuck onto it, but the shaking didn’t do much. Kyra ignored it and shoved the car key into the ignition.

  She turned it hard and, at first, the engine struggled to start, but then it turned over with ease. Kyra immediately set her eyes to the fuel gauge and was dumbfounded to see that the car was nearly full on gas.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kyra said. For a moment, she had a light of hope in her heart that they were going to be able to make it to the sanctuary in New York in time to save her mother’s life. Kyra began to smile until she looked through the windshield and her heart stopped. As the vehicle started, the headlights lit up the parking lot with ease and Kyra found herself staring at three of the undead.

  The monsters slowly waddled there way towards the source of the light, but in Kyra’s case, that meant that she was on the other end of it. She knew that she was backed into a corner. With no way out behind her, Kyra reached for her weapon. Although she once had the tire iron, she had dropped it with the gas cans when she realized that the car may still have some gas, leaving her weaponless.

  Kyra’s mind kicked into survival mode. She hopped out from leaning into the vehicle and instinctively grabbed the carcass by the collar of the jacket that still wrapped around the throat of the man. Kyra pulled as hard as she could and dragged the man out from the inside of the car. The seat was black with dried blood, but what really disgusted Kyra was the amount of maggots that were left.

  She didn’t have time to worry about it. Kyra used her foot to swipe the maggots off of th
e seat before turning and sitting in it herself. She shut the door and put the car in drive. Kyra didn’t even have to think about it anymore. To her, killing these things was a way of living now and she had to do it with anything that she had available to her. In this case that meant using the disgusting car that had a rotting body inside of it for who knows how long.

  Kyra hit the gas and slammed the car into two of the oncoming monsters, watching as their bodies bounced off to the side. She didn’t stop there either. Kyra kept her foot on the gas and directed the car towards their Jeep, where her mother and the babies were still sleeping. Kyra put the car in park and rushed to the passenger side door.

  Opening it, Kyra woke her mother from he sleep and began to unbuckle her seatbelt. Karen, confused and disoriented, asked her daughter, “What’s going on?”

  “We’re switching cars,” Kyra answered. She directed her mother to the new vehicle, opening the passenger side door and resting her mother inside of it.

  “Kyra, this car smells awful,” Karen announced, “It smells like something died in here!”

  Kyra ignored her mother because she was too focused on getting the babies. She opened the back door to the Jeep and unbuckled Kassidy’s carseat, ignoring Kassidy’s immediate crying that followed. As she transported the seat to the new car, Kyra could see the two of the undead monsters zoning in on their location. The third one couldn’t be seen from where Kyra was at, but she knew that it had to be somewhere.

  Kyra opened the back door to the new car and placed her baby sister’s seat inside. Once situated, Kyra finally went back for Sara, who didn’t have a car seat thanks to their quick escape from Jason’s home. Sara had been sitting up with the seatbelt over her lap to support her. Karen has made sure to tighten it so that Sara couldn’t slip through.

  Kyra, who wasn’t planning on wasting anymore time, grabbed Sara quickly and handed her to Karen sitting in the passenger seat of the new car. Karen was still handicapped to using her right arm only, but she held onto Sara as tightly as possible while Kyra grabbed the boxes of baby food and other supplies that they had brought from the home.