I'm not sure how long I walk, but the moment I see it, I know I have to prove something to myself, before the sun sets and it becomes too dangerous to experiment. The church's steeple looms high above, piercing the sky with its spire as I watch a flock of pigeons flutter about the belfry and coo as if nothing is wrong. But everything is wrong, and the sanctuary within calls to me, like in the days of my youth, when my father would take me to church, and I'd listen to the dry lectures and do my best to not lie down on the bench during sermon for a quick snooze.
The memory snaps me back into my mission, and I let out a slow, longing breath as the vision of my father fades. He will never see the mess the world has become. He'll never have to deal with the ramifications of every action the way I do in these horrid times. In death, he is the luckier one, but I can't give up. I have my mother and Jeremy to protect.
So I march up the steps of the massive building, pristine with its wooden doors, brass knobs and stained glass windows. The beauty of it all eludes me as I press my bloody handprint against the cool doorknob and rotate it. Shoving the heavy door open, I enter the cool foyer before clicking it shut behind me.
The sound of soft voices singing echoes throughout the place, bouncing off the walls from the great sanctuary beyond another set of doors ahead. I'm sure the people inside know what's going on outside, but they make no effort to lock the place down. They put so much faith in the safety of this hallowed ground. It makes me wonder if there could be something to that. Either way, I'm on a mission and need to find out if what was said about vampires could work on these mad creatures.
As I make my way to the double inner doors of the sanctuary, I pause and find a wooden cross hanging above a picture of the Christ. I peer at it for a moment before I snatch the cross and stuff it into the belt of my pants.
"Sorry," I whisper to the picture of Jesus looking on with kind eyes and a halo lighting him up. My guilt over stealing wanes quickly as I push on the sanctuary doors enough to get a good peek inside.
There are a few people sitting in the pews, and some singing in the choir area behind the podium where the priests or pastors lecture. I'm not sure what sort of a church I'm in for some look the same unless you read the name. Before I proceed further, I see what I came for. A stoup stands in the back of the sanctuary, still and alone. I get giddy and then remember I have nothing to put the holy water in. I let go of the door and back up into the foyer, flicking my eyes about to see what I can use to carry the water.
The foyer has few options. It's neat, bare and free of clutter. I start to think I might not find anything here and will have to return later when I spot the trash can. Sprinting over to it, I flip the top up and hold it as the hinge keeps it from coming off. Peering inside, I see an empty bottle of water and, just my luck, it has the top to it screwed on. I pluck it out, uncap it and shake the remains of water out of it.
Perfect.
Slipping back into the sanctuary, I walk softly to the stoup and pull the top off it. Luckily it isn't locked, and I dip in the bottle for a bit of water, rinse it out and chuck the waste water to the carpet before I let it sit in the basin and fill to the fullest.
The place has gone quiet, and I barely notice it until I look up while screwing the cap back onto the bottle. The water is tinged pink from the blood that has seeped off my skin and tainted the water with its grit. I hope it still works, but the stares I get have me giving them a weak smile before I turn and head right out the doors and then to the outside world.
I hope I get to test it before I get home.
Sure enough, the overhang where I had killed the old man has several new ferals lingering under its protective shell against the harsh afternoon sun. The three sitting under it watch me studiously as I approach. I meet their challenging glares for a moment before looking away. My fear blooms as I wonder if they can control people with their minds, like the stories say they can. They hiss at me, and I get my answer as I find that already one person has gotten too close. His body shows no signs of struggle; no scratches or other defensive wounds from what I can see. He lies face down on the shaded concrete, spread eagle, as if willingly sacrificed. Surrounding the body is a sticky puddle of what I know to be blood. He's probably better off now. I just hope he doesn't come back as one of these feral creatures.
***
Reassured that the three are no longer humans, I turn toward my awaiting van in the alley next to the store. I hope it's still there and cross my fingers that no one has looted it yet. I still want to hit that store up, but want to test some theories out first. Slipping the key into the lock, I shove the side door of the van open and get an extra magazine for my favorite 9mm semi-automatic pistol along with a machete, for good measure. The machete is a crude weapon, which I taught myself how to use with lots of online video tutorials. Sometimes they show more blade use techniques in my martial arts classes, but I hadn't gone deeper into that portion of training yet. I wish I had. No better time than now to need it, right?
I shove the door closed, contemplating whether to lock it or not. If I have to get away fast, the locked door and fumbling with the keys could be tragic. But if I leave it unlocked, theft is more probable. I sigh and leave the driver's side door unlocked and lock the rest, hoping it won't bite me in the backside in the end.
Heading back around the corner to the overhang, ready with weapons, I frown to find another feral has joined the group. The apartments down the way must be where they're coming from. I frown, but it gives me more of them to try my weapons on. The four turn as I walk into their line of vision, and they begin to snarl, hiss and snap jaws at me. Their eyes, once normal colors, are now deep crimson, red as blood.
There's no way I can't admit I'm scared. These creatures are like Hell itself and filled with the ferocity of wild animals. The ones who've tasted the fallen man in the puddle of his own blood have the crimson smeared around their mouths and dripping from their teeth. Even human teeth look dangerous when covered in red, sinewy gore.
I swallow the desert forming in my mouth as my tongue sticks to the roof. It makes me lick the dryness of my cracking lips. Note to self, get a drink and some lip balm when I blow the doors down on this joint. It's now or never.
I bring the gun up and aim for the last feral from the left, pulling the trigger to hit him square in the chest. He staggers back, falling to the concrete, but a moment later, pushes off and snarls at me, looking madder than ever before. I gulp and shoot again, this time at the head, and it makes a fine mess of what used to be the right side of his forehead. His eyes loll in his head as he stumbles to stay upright before crashing to the ground in a loud thump.
Okay, so hits to the head slow them down... significantly. File that away in the 'important' memory box.
Next, I yank out the water bottle I have stuffed in a loop of my pants. Unscrewing the cap, I step closer, hoping to get as many of them with the holy water as I can. Almost within arm's reach of one of them, I hold the bottle out and shake it furiously, soaking the ferals with the fluid.
The screeching is horrendous, and as soon as I empty the bottle's contents onto them, I drop the plastic to the ground and cover my ears. The sound pierces the air like arrows shooting into my eardrums, and I grimace. It's my turn to stagger back, but I glance at them long enough to see their skin sizzle wherever the water has touched them. The one I hit full blast in the face also crumbles to the floor and into the sunlight with half his body in the bright light. He immediately combusts, and his body shakes violently as the fire consumes him more quickly than anyone can pull him away from the fiery sun. I watch in fascination, but the others don't seem to notice the feral's peril, for they are hissing at me again, madder than ever.
Their melting faces make my stomach tumble as I fight to stay upright without hurling the small lunch I had earlier. I still have two more ferals to dispatch, but instead of my resolve growing stronger with each kill, my knees become weaker and weaker.
I can do this. I know it.
I breathe in deep, hoping it centers me enough to take the last two out.
"Okay," I breathe out, bouncing back and forth on my feet. "Two down, two to go."
I put the gun away and feel for the cross at my belt. I have to get close to use it, which makes it impractical. Still, I have to know if it works or not. I hold out the machete and step closer. My hand shakes, but I breathe even, slow breaths, knowing that if I don't stay in control, there will be no surviving anything today.
People run down the street, probably from the same apartments these four came from, and gasp as they see the monsters I'm facing down. They don't stop to help, but why would they? They just keep on sprinting past, bags in hand as they yell at each other to hurry. Hurry to where? I wonder.
"Don't look. She's good as dead," I hear one say across the road from me as he shoves luggage into his car and his wife sits trembling in the passenger side. She looks ill, pale even. I wonder if she's sick, if she's caught this virus devouring the remains of the human race. They look like they packed in a hurry. Probably tried to hunker down in their small apartment before it got too much to handle and they decided to run. Whatever drove them to leave in a panic, it was probably too late for them now. As her husband flings himself into the driver's side, she dons sunglasses and still hangs her thin, pale hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun.
I don't think it's me who's going to be dead today. The beige sedan screeches its tires as he slams on the gas and speeds away. I know I can probably follow its path and find it wrecked down the way. The woman is shaded in her spot and the windows are heavily tinted. It's only a matter of time before there will be enough shade for her to turn, and he will be her first victim.
My focus returns to the two before me as my slick hand grips the hilt of my machete. They continue to push at the boundaries of the shade as the sun shifts across the sky. In a matter of hours, the ferals can have anyone unfortunate to linger on the streets. But they will not be having me.
I bend my knees, suck in a breath, and let out a wailing battle cry as I run toward them, blade out and ready to cut away the death in their eyes. I swing at one first, then the other, sending both stumbling back from the deep slices across their bodies. In the shade now, they don't look bothered that they are bleeding profusely from their chests. They continue to come, so I shift on my feet and ready the blade to swing higher at the first one to reach me. I hit his neck, and though I get deep enough where blood pours from the wound, it's not enough. He continues to come at me, and I shove him back as we slam against the wall of the pillar.
I push off and spin as the other feral comes hurtling in our direction. She hits the other on the pillar, and they both turn toward me as they find their balance. I pull back the blade for another swing at the other side of the man and run toward him, hoping the woman feral goes flying to the ground when I slam into him. He's between me and her, and I can use him as a shield after I get his head removed from his body.
I swing as he comes at me, roaring like a beast as his dirtied hands reach out toward me, aching to taste my blood, just a little sip....
The machete hacks at his neck and slips though the remaining bone and tendons holding his head on. His head goes spinning to the ground as his body crumbles. I barely have time to swing about again as the woman makes it to me, and I slam into her side. The momentum throws her off balance, and she trips over the body of the fallen feral. I pull out my hunting knife, jump onto her writhing body, and plunge it into her heart.
Her body twitches, but she's still alive. Blood is pouring from each wound, which gives me enough time to yank the crucifix from my belt to press it to her chest. It sizzles, and I have to yank back as another finger burns from the flames erupting at the contact point. The cross clanks to the ground, but the flames leave behind a very specific charred outline of it. I smile at knowing this, but I'm not sure how it will help me much since I have to get right up close onto a feral to use it. My jeans are getting spotted with the sticky mess pooling under her, especially after I pull out my hunting blade and grip it tightly. Stuck, I can't move off her yet because she's still squirming, so I slam the blade straight into her right eye socket.
She jerks, sputters and gags on the blood streaming from her mouth before going still. Only a small exhale lets me hear the residual life leave her. Blood is all over the place, leaving me smeared in her black and red blood. It's darker than normal, and I use her thin sweater to wipe it off.
She begins to twitch again, causing me to jump to my feet, grab her arms and yank her toward the sun, a few feet away. If they don't die from stabs to the head, I'm going to have to remove a lot of heads if I can't incinerate them first. The thought makes me want to puke as the sunlight sparks on her flesh, setting fire to her soft, pink sweater. I stumble away from the flames, land on my hands, and finally lose my lunch.
I stay there, hunched over and feeling the world spin while I spit the nasty from my mouth and catch up on my breathing. I peer over at the fallen ferals in the shade and hope they don't try to get back up, too. I'll have to drag the ones that weren't decapitated into the sun to make sure they don't resurrect themselves as soon as I recover. My muscles ache as a fiery burn engulfs them. My fatigue seeps back in from the lack of sleep and poor nourishment during the past few days. I have to eat better, take better care of myself, for there will no longer be doctors or dentists or anyone to help put me back together.
The loneliness this evokes makes the tears well up in my bleary eyes, and all I want to do is sob as I sit back on my heels. I have no friends anymore. People are dying all around me. I hear a distant screech of tires and then the inevitable crunch of metal as a car crashes some distance away. People scream, but the lack of sirens verifies my utter desolation and confirms the end is near.
I have to get up, I tell myself. I have to go into that store and get supplies. We need them. Plus, this place has guns next door, in a small pawn shop I can hit first and then pull my van around to fill up with any food to be found. The sun will not wait for me to finish. It has already given me so much already, consuming the feral wastes and shining on my back, a soft, warm but lonely comfort.
So I get up. I get on. I grab everything in sight, including tons of lip balm to feed the bad habit of licking my lips to utter rawness. I grab some more 9mm handguns, along with a few shotguns. Ammunition gets dumped into duffle bags as I grab what I can. I have to hurry. The shade out front could bring more ferals before I get done inside the stores. Luckily, the doors have pull-down gates, so I drag those suckers down to stave off the crazies while inside. I line up my bags and place them at the base of these gates until I finish my scavenging, stuffing them to their zippered brims. Only then do I pull the gates up and shove the bags into the van.
I return to pull the gates back down, for good measure. Maybe they will serve to keep the place feral-free so when I come back for more, there might be something worth salvaging from here. Maybe not. There will be a lot of maybe nots in my foreseeable future. I can count on that.
Cranking the engine, I slam on the gas and watch for more crazies out on the road. Already, I find I have to swerve around stalled cars, with victims stuck inside with ferals, their family members turned and ravaging their bodies. Some have managed to hop out of their cars after someone inside turns, only to turn themselves and die in the fiery ash as the sun lights them up. It's a harrying ride back home, and I hope nothing has disturbed my family in my absence. I pray I don't find either of them turned. I don't know if I can do what I have to do if that happens. It would be asking me to do the unthinkable, the one thing I can never do, ever.
I shake the thought from my mind and head onto the residential road leading to the cluster of ranch houses where our home stands, in a western Las Vegas neighborhood. I lay my gun in my lap as the van speeds away on the bumpy road, back to my new life and the only ones left I love.