Chapter 2 - Decisions
Sally Perkins lay huddled in a dank corner of her room, a prisoner in her own home. Outside the mahogany wooden door were her brothers, crazed, ravaged, driven insane by the Pulse. Making awfully sickening noises while sowing widespread indiscriminate destruction to their own home, the two males loitered and prowled along the narrow corridor just outside Sally’s refuge. They sensed her presence, but they could not discern her exact position. Given time however, they would tear the door down and after that, quite possibly tear Sally limb from limb. Sally buried her head into her tear-drenched hands. John, she mentally cried, where are you?
Six kilometers away John Nielsen was fighting for his life once more. After abandoning his car a short distance away from his home because of the debris choking the road along with the sheer number of phone-mad people, John ran nearly all the way to his destination. Well, as close to his destination was he possibly could, given the resistance dogging him the whole time. A woman in a power suit tried to disembowel him with a shovel (where did she get that from?) while a blue-uniformed junior college student swiped at him with her fingernails. Normally, John would not even hurt a fly, but today ‘normal’ just did not apply.
One-on-one, John would have at least stood a chance against JC Girl, but Shovel Lady was also trying to end his life. So it was a little bit unfair in that regard. He had to think out of this one, and not meet the threat head on, for if he did, he would see his head on the ground, along with the rest of his body. Just as JC Girl swiped at his head for the sixth time since the beginning of the attack, John saw an opportunity to reverse the sands. Standing motionless, JC Girl’s bloodsoaked fingers cut through the air like a deadly claw, whistling John’s death knell. In the spilt second before her fingers made contact, John ducked, and the fingers swung past his head by a hair’s breadth, and right into the stomach of Shovel Lady.
Shocked and in severe pain, Shovel Lady let out a guttural cross between a roar and a groan, and lashed out at her attacker. Her shovel found a nice spot on JC Girl’s scalp to land on, sending her crashing to the pavement. Relentless, Shovel Lady raised her weapon and brought it down onto the prone body of JC Girl, again and again and again. John suddenly felt sick: what was left of JC Girl was a jumbled mass of blood, flesh and nylon threads, worlds apart from what it originally was.
The threat eradicated, Shovel Lady now returned her attention to John. She raised her now-very-bloody shovel again, and swung it down in John’s general direction. As with Mr Lee previously, most, if not all, of the phone-crazies suffer horribly in the aiming department, and John easily sidestepped Shovel Lady’s falling spade of doom. Eager to continue moving on, John grabbed Shovel Lady’s namesake and tugged.
To his absolute horror and amazement, her arms came off – skin, muscle, bones and all. Despite being detached from the parent organism, Shovel Lady’s arms held on to the shovel like huge, bulging and bleeding leeches. Oh crap, John thought, someone could really lend her a hand now. Shovel Lady rocked back and forth, struggling to maintain balance as blood gushed out in torrents from the sides of her torso where her arms had been. With one final coarse cry, Shovel Lady dropped to her knees, then fell head first into JC Girl’s pulpy mess.
The irony.
John hurriedly disposed of the shovel and the accessories that came free with it, and quickly resumed his journey to Sally’s house. His gut had been wrenching in upon itself, twisting and turning and generally making a huge din in his abdomen. From past experiences, such feelings meant something bad was going to happen, and John kind of had an idea just what that might be.
Sally.
He brushed away the thought and continued to maneuver his way through the mindless hordes of crazed people, wrecked vehicles and assorted debris strewn all over the road, sidewalks and any visible surface. All around John, chaos ensued. People were killing each other – more than ever before - and stuff was burning in an uncountable number of places simultaneously. Horns blared, metal clashed, bones broke.
It was a bad day to be out.
At last, John arrived at his terminal destination: Sally’s semi-detached terrace house, or what was left of it. The place looked like it had been hit by a typhoon, a hurricane and a tornado attack all at once. All of its windows were shattered; the front door was lying on the ground filled with miscellaneous items of every sort; the lawn had several landings from unidentified flying objects, most probably coming from the second floor. Not to mention the couple of bodies lying in a pool of maroon blood outside the main gate. In all, the place was a mess, and Sally was right smack in the middle of that mess.
John took a deep breath, swallowed then advanced forward. He picked by a bent golf club from the floor, amazed himself by straightening it, and entered the front door of Sally’s residence, literally Hell’s Gate.
Although it was three in the afternoon, Sally’s place was unusually dark. Counting the fact that her house faced the east, it was hardly a surprise. But even so, they should be a little light streaming in. Today however, there was hardly a ray of sunshine in these desolate quarters. John’s visibility was reduced to a mere index-finger’s length from his face.
I have got to find me a flashlight, John decided, this is worse than wallowing in my own misery. Adding a chuckle for comic effect, John felt his way through the sprawling premises, his club raised in an attack position.
Without further incident, John reached what seemed to be the kitchen. There should be a flashlight around here, he thought. He lay his weapon down onto the washing area near a sink, and then proceeded to rummage through the drawers and cabinets to find what he was looking for. After a while, John fished out a long black torch from one of the utility cabinets. The batteries were still there: the thing was as heavy as a brick. He felt for the switch. Light flooded the kitchen with an audible click.
And Sally’s elder brother was there before him.
Completely taken by surprise, John stumbled and fell on his butt. He looked up at his aggressor: Sally’s brother was wounded in several places, and his clothes were in dire need of change. John’s eyes instinctively moved to the hands, and found what they were looking for: a cell phone. That pretty much cemented Sally’s theory of ‘people going mad when they were using cell phones’. All of John’s previous attackers carried cell phones, from Mr Lee to Shovel Lady. Now Sally’s brother joined their ranks.
At first, John tried to reason with him.
“Hey dude!” He started,” Remember me?”
No response. Sally’s brother looked at him with bloodshot eyes filled with eager anticipation.
“Erm,” John tried again, this time with a desperate tone in his voice, “Aren’t you gonna get me a drink? Well I’m a guest aren’t I?” He let out a small laugh, and that was all that Sally’s brother needed to make his move.
With one forceful lunge, Sally’s brother pinned John to the floor, squeezing him between his powerful, toned, bloodstained arms. John cried in pain, but his attacker was relentless. John could feel the life being squeezed out of him in short sharp gasps.
“Hey!” John muttered in between gasps and wheezes, “Let me go! I have to get to Sally you dimwit!” He threw punches at Sally’s brother’s cranial cavity, but that did not seem to have any effect. John screamed again, this time for Sally.
At the mention of his sister’s name, Sally’s brother loosened his hold on John, as if he remembered something. Seizing this opportune moment, John swung out hard with the flashlight, and the sleek black pole connected with his attacker’s skull with a sickening crack. Sally’s brother collapsed like a rag doll, unconscious but alive. John sighed a tremendous sign of relief.
“I never liked you anyway,” John uttered as he picked himself up.
Two floors above, Sally Perkins remained huddled in her cornered sanctuary. Outside her room, just separated by a ten centimeter wide concrete wall was her now-insane brother. Tommy, as he was known before his brain matter got wasted, was crashing into the wall again and again, much like a cat constantly biting a can of tuna to get to the succulent meat inside. Only this time, that succulent meat is his sister’s. Tommy himself was but a cadaver of his former self: multiple lacerations aligned his pale-skinned forearms, many festering steadily in the dank and humid conditions of the house. His head was cratered with pockmarks, most likely from burns, and a wide gash the size of a match stick decorated his solar plexus. He was limping on his right foot, using the weight of his body to smash his body into the wall repeatedly, seemingly oblivious to the pain and damage being done to his already desecrated body.
Sally could hear her brother groan as he ran into the wall for the forty-seventh time, shaking the loose fortification as well as her sanity. One more forceful blow would bring the wall crashing down. Tears rolled down her dust-covered cheeks as Tommy reared up for another ram.
Sally waited for the inevitable impact.
It did not come.
John calibrated the exact trajectory and force of impact before bringing the tip of his heavy-duty flashlight down onto the head of the phone-crazy ramming into the wall of Sally’s room. He looked pitiful, with multiple injuries adorning his pale skin. That flashlight blow shook his fragile frame like it was no denser than paper and sent him crumpling into a heap on the cold hard floor.
I ended your misery pal, John thought, now be on your way and don’t wake up.
John raced to the door of Sally’s room and opening it with such force that could very well rip the door from its hinges.
“Sally!” He screamed as his eyes scanned frantically for her presence. Sally, visibly surprised, immediately stood up, tears in her eyes.
“John!” She leapt into his arms and embraced him tightly, the dams holding back her tears fully broken.
“It’s OK now, Sally,” John assured as he brushed her hair, “Everything’s OK.” They spent the next minute locked in that warm cuddle, oblivious to the hell that was raging outside.
It was then that Sally asked him a question, to which he had no answer.
“What shall we do?” She asked, “Where shall we go?”
To be continued...
