We sat in stunned silence for minutes until Jake broke the quiet. “Um… did he just tell us there is a zombie outbreak going on?” He stared at me and I watched his face go through a litany of emotions from shock to disbelief.
“I think so,” I replied, unsure even as I spoke the words. “This is a joke, right?” Daphne had moved to the front door and began sniffing at the bottom corner. She backed away growling as a loud bang on the door jolted us off the sofa, and she began barking wildly. “Jake,” I whispered, “I’m scared.”
I snatched Daphne into my arms and continued to back away from the door. My heart was pounding in my chest. The fear gripped me, and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Over the years, Jake had played tricks on me and joked about my irrational fear of zombies. Was this it? Had my worst nightmare come to fruition? I remember hearing the news last year when a guy in Miami got hopped up on bath salts and ate some other guy’s face. Was this a street drug gone bad?
It was then that we heard it. Above the droning of the wind and rain and the banging on the door, we heard a siren growing louder until it became so loud we were certain that it was nearby. The siren and the banging stopped all at once, and I beat Jake to the peephole in the door. A cruiser had pulled onto the front lawn, its door stood open, and a uniformed officer was standing in front of the car. He was shouting at something I couldn’t see through the tiny hole, and he raised his gun.
“What is it?” Jake asked me.
“It’s a cop. I think there’s someone out there with him. He’s got his weapon pointed at something or someone and he’s yelling at them. I can’t make out what he’s saying.”
Jake nudged me out of the way to get a glimpse at the events outside. “This is ridiculous. I can’t see anything. I’m going out there.”
I grabbed for him before he could unlock the dead bolt. “Don’t you dare open that door,” I snapped at him. Overpowering feelings of fear and anxiety came over me, and I felt myself start to panic. My voice increased to an octave so shrill that I sounded like I’d been sucking helium. “Someone is pointing a gun at us. Why would you give him an easy target? Don’t be an idiot.”
“Because,” Jake said, “I want to know what the hell is going on. This is still my house, and I want to know why he’s pointing a gun at it.” Jake yanked open the front door, the wind picking up the momentum and slamming it against the wall as it opened outward. The opening granted us a full view of the lawn, the cop, and the man approaching him. Daphne was squirming under my arm, growling with a ferocity I’d never heard.
“Stop right there, or I’ll shoot!” yelled the officer. For a minute, I thought he was talking to us. We both froze. But the man walking toward him kept moving, and I realized the gun was trained on him. The officer was visibly shaking. I could see the panic in his eyes all the way across the lawn.
I squeezed past Jake to get a better view of the scene. I hadn’t noticed while looking through the peep-hole, but there were chunks of something stuck in the car’s radiator. I realized it was hair and flesh. The rain caused blood to trail down the grill and end in a pink puddle on the lawn. I let loose a gasp of horror, my hand flying up to cover my mouth and muffle the sound while my eyes strained to take in the detail.
The man was still walking toward the cop. Not really walking, but sort of shuffling along like he was a baby taking his first steps. His arms outstretched, he shambled closer. His back was to Jake and I, and his white polo shirt and jeans were smeared with mud. The gunshot snapped me out of my shock and I screamed. The man stumbled back but regained his balance and kept going. Three more shots rang out in succession, and the man’s head snapped back as he went limp and fell onto the muddy lawn.
The officer lowered his gun, hand trembling, and walked closer to the man lying dead in our yard. He stared down at the body, emotion unreadable, as Jake and I crept closer.
The body lay still, creating a barrier between us and the cop. The top of the downed-man’s head was a mess of bone and shredded brain matter. The eyes, forever open, were clouded white, pupils radiating out with red spiderlike blood vessels, and the skin surrounding them was nearly black and sunken. His flesh was taut and mottled with death. His torso though, that was where I saw the real carnage. The front of the man’s polo shirt had been torn nearly the entire length of its flimsy cotton. It was held together only at the neck band and was saturated with blood. His chest cavity had been ravaged and was empty of vital organs. Flesh was flayed from bone and left his ribs exposed.
I backed away, feeling sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t hold back the vomit. I threw up until I was kneeling on the grass dry heaving stomach acid, one hand pushed into the wet earth to hold me up and the other clutching the dog.
Jake and the cop stood motionless, staring down in disbelief at what had once been a man.
“What’s going on?” Jake asked the cop.
Officer Donnelly, according to the name badge located over his left breast pocket, pulled himself together and said, “You need to get somewhere safe. The main parts of town have been overrun with… whatever this is.” He waved his gun hand in the direction of the dead body. “Stay inside, lock your doors, and do not open them for anyone. And if you can’t stay hidden, if they get in, get in your car and drive.”
“Where? If town isn’t safe, where can we go?” I was shaking all over as Jake helped me to my feet, and my words came out as a stutter.
The cop looked up at me sullenly. “I don’t know.”
He walked back toward his car and was about to say something when we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from down the street. We all whipped around to face the noise and scanned the neighborhood. The screams continued for a few seconds, then nothing. I squinted to see in the distance and could make out a group of three people huddled on the ground in front of a house at the end of the street. I wiped the rain from my eyes and squinted again as the scene came into focus. They were eating someone. Possibly someone we knew. They ripped at their victim like they were digging for buried treasure.