“Well, Troy grabs the shotgun off the fridge and opens the door and waves the gun at the guy. But this guy has his guts falling out and he just lunges into the house. Troy shouted for us to run,. So me and the kids run out the front door. Troy runs, too. That guy, the messed up one, falls on his own innards.”
Jenni made a face and shivered. “Damn.”
“So we get into the truck and Troy is getting into the truck when he sees Mabel, our neighbor running to us. She’s got some nasty folks after her. Troy shouts her name and reaches out to her. And she bit his hand! So he cold cocks her one and we see her back is all tore up. He gets into the truck and we hauled ass to the civic center.”
“So if the rescue center was the civic center, how’d you end up here?” Jenni was enraptured by the story and reached for another piece of stale toast. “Soldiers came and got us after FEMA took off.”
Jenni mulled this over. “FEMA took off?”
“Yeah. They gave us milk and cookies and told us to sit down in the auditorium. They took the worst of the messed up people into this reception hall or something. I dunno. They said Troy wasn’t hurt enough to go back there with the volunteer doctors and nurses. I heard all sorts of rumors that the hospital wasn’t taking no more patients.” The woman sighed. “We just sat in there and it was real scary. All we heard was gossip and shit. I heard someone was gonna come and give us all shots so we wouldn’t get rabid, too. Troy starts getting a fever and the kids were all antsy and it was just plain shitty. Then the damn FEMA people started packing up their stuff and told us that we need to sit tight and wait for the Army to come get us and take us to another place. So they bail and we get stuck in the auditorium just waiting.” A few other people began to draw closer to listen. Jenni became aware of one older black woman vigorously nodding her head. “Oh, yeah. I remember that!”
“So Troy gets sicker and so do some other people. Finally the Army does show up, but it’s just a few guys. They start getting on the radio trying to figure out what is going on. One of them comes in saying that the doors to that other room are locked and there are those things in there.”
“FEMA just up and left us with a whole bunch of those zombies in that back room. All those doctors and nurses got ate up,” the black woman cut in. Jenni thought back on Katie’s decision not to go to the rescue center in Madison and was she ever grateful for her friend’s intuition.
“Right, right. So then more soldiers show up, but they are looking for a place to be safe, too. Then a few more. And it gets real clear to us that none of them know what is going on. Then that one guy shows up.”
“That handsome Kevin,” the black woman put in with a grin.
“Yeah, and he finds out about those things in the back room and he just says that we are all going to the mall. So they load up the old people in the trucks. The soldiers start going and asking people if they are bit or not. And all the bit people are made to go to another room. Including my Troy,” the woman took a breath, looking ready to cry. “The kids are crying and it’s just bad.”
“Uh-huh, real bad,” the other woman agreed. “Well, we got into lines and filed outside. The trucks were taking people back and forth to the mall. It’s only like two blocks away, but they wanted us to be safe. You got a ride on a truck, didn’t you, Ethel?”
“Thank you, Jesus, yes, or I wouldn’t be here today,” Ethel answered.
“My kids were crying real hard for their Daddy. We younger folks were the last to go and just as the trucks left with some people, the doors behind us start banging hard. We look and those things are trying to get out of the Civic Center. So the soldiers shouted ‘run.’ And, girl, we ran.”
Ethel nodded her head. “We got into the mall and the soldiers were all shouting and telling us to keep moving. Was bad.”
“We were running like crazy down the street. A whole bunch of us with some soldiers. Then those doors got knocked down and those things came running. And everyone was screaming and crying. People were tripping. The soldiers were trying to shoot...” The woman steadied herself emotionally and Ethel took her hand.
“Take a breath, Amy, take a breath,” Ethel said softly. Jenni looked around to see their table was now not only packed with people but others were gathering around to listen. Most were nodding their heads, obviously remembering the horror of the first day.
“And my little boy said, ‘Look, Mommy, Daddy is coming, too’ and I looked back. It’s not my Troy anymore. He is all messed up and screaming. We just keep running and I could barely breathe. One of the soldiers grabbed my kids and just yanked them up into his arms and ran. And I was running hard. And people...started…to fall back…then we could hear them getting…getting…ripped up…”
A big black man leaned forward, taking over the story as Amy sobbed into Ethel’s shoulder. “So we made it to the mall and the soldiers were closing the gates the city council had put in to keep vandals from doing graffiti on the mall.” “Probably the only thing they ever did right,” someone huffed.
“We just had that one gate to get in and the soldiers were shooting and we just ran, ma’am. We just ran,” the black man continued.
“They shoved cars up against the gates to keep them closed and kept those things out,” Amy said.
“Later, the helicopters came,” the black man added. “Oh, yes, they were shooting those undead bastards for hours. Almost ran out of ammunition,” Ethel added.
“Those soldiers didn’t know what they were doing at first,” another woman said. “They were scared, too, but once they got it safe and those things weren’t getting in, they tried to calm us down.
“Fed us…”
“Got us safe…”
“So this wasn’t the rescue center?” Jenni asked. “They just brought you here and made do?”
“Exactly,” Ethel said.
“It was real scary. Every time new people showed up to get saved, it was real scary. Lots of shooting. I heard the helicopters went and got more ammunition and soldiers until the National Guard base got taken by the dead things,” a middle-aged man said. “And they had to…shoot…the people who got bitten.” Amy, the first woman who started speaking, nodded sadly. “They had to. Cause they’d die and just get right back up.”
Jenni’s back was a coil of nervous knots. Hearing what these people had been through brought back all her memories of the first day. When Bill touched her back, she jumped, then looked up with relief to see him. He slid onto the bench next to her and looked very solemn.
“So you folks have been here all this time with the soldiers taking care of you?” Bill asked. “For the first week,” Amy answered. “Then the Senator came with her soldiers and that Major General. They made Kevin step down. He did such a good job in the beginning, too. When they came, they brought a lot more zombies with them. They went through the damn town and dragged them down on us.”
“So you don’t like the Senator?”