I already said I liked control.
I also like when people know their place. That sounds stuck up, but it’s true. If you’re not the leader, don’t try to boss me around. If I run things better, don’t try to overstep me. Don’t assume you know me; don’t pretend you know why I do things. There are a lot of things people don’t know about me. There’s a lot of things the others assumed about me.
There are always reasons for my choices; there should always be reasons behind everything you do. That’s why, even though I had passed out, even though AJ had said we were leaving, we didn’t leave immediately. I had reasons for it. I had a plan, an idea. You should never run off of chaos; you should run on organized decisions.
Reading this, I can see why Kayleigh teases me about being anal. But what I’m saying is still true. It all goes back to that control, and I like that because it gives organization; it gives reasoning to the world. With the way the world is today, we could use all the organization we can get. Not people like AJ trying to just go with it and making it all worse by overstepping me.
People need to know their place.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
10:05 a.m.
“We need to go!”
“You have a way out of here?!”
“I’m okay… I’m okay… I’m okay…”
Howie felt like pulling his hair out in a mixture of fear, fury, and frustration. They’d found the undead roaming outside hours before. Well, the other two had. Howie, from reasons he didn’t wish to think about, had passed out. When he’d come to only a short while later, he’d found Kayleigh in the middle of a panic attack and AJ throwing their stuff together, getting ready to go. For the past five hours, they’d been arguing about how to handle this, while Kayleigh was in her own little world on the hotel bed.
“Can’t believe this shit. Zombies are all over the damn place, and what do we do? We wait for you to take a damn bath.”
“Well, who knows how long the water will be on? Besides, they didn’t find us.”
“YET! You rich, snobby dumbass! They’re gonna get in here soon; there’s only so many rooms to burst into. And now we have more to try to get by than we did before!”
“I’m okay… I’m okay… I’m okay…” The two continued to ignore their other companion.
“I thought they’d go away once day broke.”
AJ slapped a hand to his forehead irritably and rolled his eyes. Howie ignored the look that followed that clearly showed the other man thought Howard was an idiot, something he knew to be the furthest from the truth. “That’s fucking VAMPIRES, you moron!”
“Oh, I’m sorry – next time the world ends, I’ll make sure to keep better track of horror movie trivia!”
“Well, if you’d listened to me, we’d have our asses out of here by now!”
“STOP IT!” they heard Kayleigh finally shout, before resuming her former position. Her knees were held close to her chest, and she rocked slowly back and forth on the bed. Howie liked Kayleigh; she wasn’t too bad, it seemed. Though sometimes she got annoying, usually her pep was refreshing in a way he’d never admit. The biggest problem with her was that, in times of stress, she completely fell apart. And it seemed to always happen at the worst times possible, like right then, when the noises were becoming too close for comfort and they’d decided it was time to leave.
Howie stretched, rather than fidget. He needed something simple to focus on at the moment so he wouldn’t lose control. It was always about maintaining some form of control so he could be able to cope with whatever was happening to him or even around him. Surely, the same could apply to this, even if it was the complete end to everything he’d once known. If he had control, he could figure out how to handle this, rather than have someone like BJ-AJ-CJ-DJ-whatever-his-name-was take over.
“Look, we need to get out of here.” Moans could be heard off in the not-too-far distance.
“Fuck, they’re in the damn hotel. Maybe they caught our scent or some shit.”
The two went to the window and peeked down below. Too many of the undead still roamed the streets to give any thought to trying to use a sheet rope to climb out the hotel. One whiff of them while hanging on a sheet would get the creatures’ attention too quickly. They’d be eaten before they could even touch the ground. The two glanced back at each other while Howie’s mind raced for some semblance of a plan to form in his head.
“We’re going to need weapons. If this shit is anything like the movies, we gotta go for the brain or the head. Play it safe that way,” AJ said quietly.
“Oh yeah, cause we’ve got so many lying around here, BJ,” Howie spat back impatiently.
“You know my fucking name is AJ, so stop that shit. We’ll have to improvise.”
“I don’t see any damn weapons in here,” Howie replied, fed up with the entire situation. How were they supposed to fight their way out if they had absolutely nothing to fight their way out with?
“You’re not fucking helping. Get creative, unless you have a better idea!”
Howie headed into the bathroom in hopes maybe he could find something. Mini shampoos, conditioners, a hairdryer… nothing actually useful. He sighed; he hated everything at that point. Before all this had happened, he’d have never stayed in a dive like this, anyhow. He eyed the towel rack; AJ had said to get creative. Would this do any good?
It’s probably cheap… But would it get the job done? Break a neck or do enough head damage? Gathering his strength, he tugged at it, groaning till it was eventually forced from the wall. He stumbled back in surprise, ready to wield his weapon. How he’d use it, Howard again wasn’t entirely sure, but it was better than nothing.
Now to bring Kayleigh back to reality…
But before he could, another noise brought Howard himself back into the present.
CRACK!
It was followed by moans, booming sets of thundering sounds, and screams coming from the only alive girl in the hotel room. Howard rushed out to see several zombies slowly stumbling over the now-destroyed door, which had been their last defense. AJ was already trying to fight one off as it reached for his skull. Standing there in shock, Howie simply watched it happen, unable to move, and unable to process anything. A complete lack of control.
AJ was wrestling, struggling with the first creature able to finally stumble through the mess of a doorway. The other two were still unable to get through, as they kept running into each other, showing a complete lack of coordination. The creature kept coming with inhuman force, slamming AJ against the wall as it let out a fearsome groan. AJ growled and shoved it off, pushing himself off the wall in the process. Without a weapon, anyone would be able to tell AJ was trying to improvise as best as he could.
“You ain’t eating my shit, you bastard!”
Howie continued to watch. It was almost like the ultimate reality show. No money or shiny, dazzling prizes; the winner either got to live or eat brains, which was simple enough. AJ’s shades were, in the end, tossed off in the struggle and crushed by the creature’s foot. AJ’s eyes narrowed intensely, and he threw the zombie off of him. The zombie flew to the other side of the room, as Kayleigh dodged out of the way, still shrieking shrilly. It landed next to the television, its leg now broken and hindering its ability to rise again for the prey. AJ lunged, thrusting the TV on the creature’s head. It continued to moan unmercifully.
“This is for breaking my fucking shades!” He kicked the TV still covering the zombie’s head again and again, till they heard a resounding snap beneath it, causing the moans to stop. The zombie was finally still.
Yet, as AJ paused to catch his breath, and Howie came back to reality yet again, he knew they weren’t safe yet. With an almost Amazon-styled yell, Howard ran at the other zombie that had finally entered the room, slamming his towel rack through its eye. Immediately, it slumped to the ground, lifeless as it should be.
A third one followed. This time AJ was ready, grabbing the lamp from the nightstand. He tossed off the shade hurriedly, and in the fashion Howie had done so, slammed it directly at its eye. The light bulb shattered against the creature’s face, and the metal rod following the bulb met its mark, stopping any more attempts to reach AJ.
Howie looked at AJ and nodded. “Okay, so we do need to get out of here.”
Kayleigh was still panicking, screaming for the empty world to hear. She wasn’t rocking anymore; she was just standing nearby the bathroom door, staring at the wreckage and corpses in utter shock and disbelief at all that was around her. AJ sighed as he picked up his now-shattered sunglasses, while Howie went to her.
“Kayleigh, calm down, they’re dead!” A pause. “Again.”
She wouldn’t calm down. Shaking Howard away, she wrapped her arms around herself. Howie shook her, trying to get her to focus. AJ shoved Howie aside after tossing the useless shades to the floor. “Let me.”
“Oh, and what are you going to do?”
A hand slapped Kayleigh forcefully across the face. The shock of it made her stare up at the two men, and AJ smirked. “Just that. Now we gotta get the hell out of here.”
He nodded in agreement. “Just follow me then.”
The three made their way out the door, and when the moans began once again, they ran in the opposite direction. They raced around the back end of the hotel, down the stairway, and into the courtyard. There was a gate surrounding them now and a simple, yet inviting pool to meet them. Howard glanced back to see more of the undead following them, having picked up their scent, as AJ had said they would.
It irritated him that the tattooed man had been right, again.
They should have left when they had first risen.
The sun shone down on them happily, showing no signs of the horrors that had been released upon them, upon the world. The sky was crystal clear, and it was the type of day even Howard would have enjoyed, before. But there was no time for useless thoughts such as this. The three continued running to the end of the courtyard, Howard leading the way.
“How the hell are we going to get anywhere, oh fearless leader?”
“What?!” Howie yelled, chancing a quick look at AJ, who was becoming more and more aggravating by the second.
“Well, we’re fucked without weapons and a car. And the car’s back fucking there, you moron!”
Realization slammed into him like the icy storms of winter attacking the countryside. His blood ran cold at what that meant. He skidded to a stop as all of this processed in his business-built mind. The three turned to see the several more of the living dead making their way towards them in their paced, slow, yet haunting shuffle.
It was actually Kayleigh who reacted first when they finally got close. Rather than kill the zombie with anything around her, she shoved it headfirst into the swimming pool. It seemed to Howie to be a bit silly, till he noticed the zombie simply wandering the bottom – not drowning, not swimming, and not even attempting to get out. It just wandered, as it did on dry land.
AJ grabbed a patio umbrella and used it to spear a second zombie through the eye, a technique they were coming to find quite handy. Howard grabbed a lawn chair when another came close and bashed it in the head. When its decaying body came back for another attempt, its foul breath filtering into Howie’s nose, he slammed it against its head again and again, till its head was forced against the gate, and he felt something snap. He had not a clue if it was the skull or the neck, nor did he care, as the body collapsed.
“We gotta head to the car!” AJ shouted above the moans and the chaos, shoving another zombie into the pool after he saw Kayleigh do it a second time.
Deciding to run for it, the three bolted back in the direction from which they had come, using their patio umbrellas or, in Howie’s case, his trusty lawn chair, to slay the undead they came across or, at the very least, shove them out of the way long enough to escape. A sight for sore eyes reached them when Howard’s purple Lexus came into their eye line. It seemed a vision of heaven right then, with all it meant to them. It was a means of escape, a haven, a way to stop fighting. Food was still stockpiled in the trunk. At that moment, the car looked to be everything they could ever want or need, and Howie could kick himself for ever deciding to leave it the night before.
Pulling his keychain out of his pockets, while holding the chair awkwardly in his attempt to keep running, he aimed the small remote at the car. The doors unlocked, and Kayleigh lunged into the backseat of the car, tears streaming down her face. With a toss of the lawn chair, Howie threw himself inside and struggled to jam his key into the ignition, as AJ entered the car and firmly shut the door behind him. They had little time, because the zombies they had before outrun had now caught up to their prey in their pursuit. Howie seemed completely unable to coordinate himself into the simple task of sticking the right key in the ignition. He kept fumbling, shaking, and the keys kept slipping within his unstable hands.
“THE WINDOWS!” Kayleigh screeched. A rotten stink met them again, along with a long hand covered with violet lesions, reaching in through the window and grabbing Kayleigh’s hair. Howie fumbled with his keys, desperately trying to start the car.
“Damn it!” he shouted furiously, when the keys slipped from his trembling fingers and fell to the floor. Beginning to panic himself, he felt around for the keys in terror of what might come if they stayed around much longer.
“Get it off! GET IT OFF!” Kayleigh screamed, trying to bat the hand and force it to release her russet hair. AJ rapidly looked around for the buttons in the car. Howie heard him cheer in triumph, signaling his success in finding them. He grabbed the keys and looked up in time to see AJ slam his hand down on the buttons. All of the windows rolled up, and the hand that had been tugging Kayleigh’s head out the window was separated. To their relief, the dead hand was gone, along with a huge chunk of her hair.
No one said anything. He started the car and floored the gas petal. The cars squealed loudly in protest as they sped away from the hotel, and they were again on their way to their next destination. A glance in the mirror showed Kayleigh with her hand to a plain-to-see bald spot, mourning her loss, as her tears continued to fall. A mix of pity and sadness stirred in Howie, feeling sorry for the poor girl unable to handle any of the madness they had been tossed in only that day.
It was AJ who broke the silence. “I told you we should’ve left when we saw them.”
“Shut up.”
“This is why you need to listen to others…”
“Shut up.”
“But you’re a prime example of society, how it shut out everyone, made people selfish and shallow. That’s why you thrived so damn much.”
“AJ! SHUT UP!”
