Zombieboy

There was a boy, he was a young nine years old, his hair was short and blond, his eyes once blue were opaque to the point where his pupils were mostly cataract white. He wore clean work overalls, cut off just below his knees, his shirt was last season's Rockies jersey. His feet were bare, with blue crocs laying by the doorway three feet or so to the south of the boy's body. The boy stirred slightly, his head was a mess, like someone had stomped on it three or four times with some heavy work boots, his skull was fractured and one of his eyes was ponderously close to actually falling out of the eye socket it was perched in. The boy was in pain. He took solace in one thing, he still knew his name. Kyle, it was a good name. He lay there in his backyard for hours, his body slowly trying to heal the damage that had almost killed him again. A fourth stomp by the old man Kyle thought of as 'the Engineer' and he would not have been living anymore. The after stomp by Jeremy had done little damage, but then Jeremy was only wearing tennis shoes, not genuine steel toed work boots like his grandfather. The cool morning air was slowly replaced with warm, then hot dry air, typical to the weather patterns in Colorado along the front range of the mountains. Before the, also typical, rainclouds moved in Kyle felt his eye pulling back into his head, he imagined it did so with a plopping sound, in reality it was just Kyle's moan of pain and then he could see more clearly. He was not dead. Not dead, which meant he could still find his mom and dad, he could still save Katie and Mr Hunter, Katie's dad who always told Kyle to call him 'Chuck'. Like the toy doll that came to life and killed people, almost.

Just before the first raindrops fell Kyle rolled over onto his belly and crawled up onto his back patio. He didn't get his favorite pants wet, which pleased him, though his feet were hanging over the edge and the rain was making small pitter-patters against them. The rain felt weird, still cool, but like it was hitting his bare legs and feet through a few layers of plastic sacks, the rain felt remote. He rubbed his hands up over his face, it felt numb, he pinched himself and he felt the pressure, just not real well. Eventually he pulled himself up, picked up his crocs and walked into his back door. Shutting and locking it behind him.

In the ruckus room he looked around, trying to remember what he was going to do next, something about shoes. Shrugging he plopped his crocs down and put them on. He knew there was something about the front door he needed to do. Walking through his house he found the door was smashed in, no way to fix it or shut it again, at least not well. Kyle sat on the couch in the living room and looked at the door, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually the rain stopped, then the sun went down. Outside the streets lights flickered to life. This, for some reason, sparked the boy to move. He had to leave, his mom was not here, his dad was not here, Katie and Chuck were still, probably, on top of the machinery behind the ice arena. If he were going to leave the house he needed to pack for the trip. Standing up he turned slowly toward his bedroom and tromped down the hall to get his school backpack off of the hook he had hung it from after coming back from the night at gramma Helens' house. It still had his gameboy and games in it, plus a ticket of the score from putt-putt golf written in his grandmother's hand. Kyle was pretty sure grandma Helen had let him win, he was not really all that good and grandma seemed to be hitting the balls wrong every time, still he felt pretty good about beating an old person at a game. He left the golf tag in the bag and looked around for other things he would need. His wind up flashlight, that went in the bag, underwear, two pair, just in case, two pair of shorts and three t-shirts. Food. He would need food too. If not for him, he thought maybe he would not want to eat apples and things anymore, he had not tried yet. Maybe food for other people. Thinking about Jeremy and the Engineer Kyle knew he would need to run away, but what if he got Jeremy alone? He looked at his baseball bat sitting in his closet. Yeah, he could use that. Kyle stuck the bat into his pack then slung it over his shoulder before heading to the kitchen.

In the kitchen Kyle grabbed a plastic sack from the local grocery store and started stuffing it with food, bread, peanut butter, jelly, apples, go-gurts, gummie bears, everything he liked to eat. Then he thought of water, his mom kept bottled water in the fridge too, he got another sack and stuffed it full off water and the canned soda his dad liked, Coors. Kyle hated the stuff, he tried to drink it with his dad, it always seemed to make his dad happy when Kyle was drinking it with him, so he tried, he just didn't like it. This was food for Chuck and Katie, he realized, he would have to see if they were okay too. Thinking about that he also thought they might need an umbrella for the afternoon storms. He could get the small one out of his mom's car when he passed it in the street. As a last test Kyle pulled the ham out of the refrigerator and cut a piece off with one of the sharp knives he normally avoided using. He held it in his hand for minute, looking at the cold, dead, black thing in front of him. He licked his lips and brought the ham to them, tentatively he stuck his tongue out and touched the ham. Not bad, it did taste okay, not what he thought it would be though, like he was still tasting something with a plastic bag over his tongue. He tried to eat it. It went down without protest. Somehow he knew it was not what he wanted, that the ham would not sustain him and make him grow stronger. He resealed the ham and dumped it in the food bag. As he was getting ready to go, cans clinking in the second sack, Kyle paused. Setting everything down he went back to the refrigerator and pulled out one of the Coors that he couldn't fit into the sack, he had to use a knife to pop the top and then took a big drink of the beverage. It wasn't bad now, in fact he liked it a lot more than the ham. Picking up his pack and the bags was not easy with one hand holding a beer, somehow he managed.

Going though the front door was no problem, the screen door was still good, so he had to use his butt to push it open, then he was in the street, into the last purple blue rays of the sun radiating off of the clouds in a metallic twilight. He made his way over to his mom's car, after some juggling he managed to get the umbrella out from under the front seat where his mom kept it and stowed in the backpack on the opposite side of the baseball bat. The two objects gave him an even more alien appearance than the picture of a nine year old boy walking down the street with two over-stuffed plastic bags in one hand and a beer in the other did. Kyle walked down the street slowly, he was not hiding now, not really, he wanted to get to Katie and Chuck as quick as he could. Halfway there he started to worry that maybe the Engineer had found them. With all those others gathered around underneath them, that could have happed. Walking faster and foregoing all attempts at subterfuge Kyle made his way to the end of his street and behind the North Jeffco Ice Arena. The zombies were still there, from here Kyle could see that Katie and her dad were still there too. The only thing that was new was there was a body on the bridge behind the arena. Getting closer Kyle did duck behind a car, peeping out he saw that the body was an old guy, the Engineer? His hopes were high as he ventured forward slowly, getting closer he saw it did not wear coveralls and it only had on one shoe, and it was a tennis shoe. No, this was just another 50 year old white guy with a huge beer belly, could have been anyone's grandpa, but not Jeremy's.

He was to the street on the opposite side of the bridge when he was stopped short.

“Kyle?”, a man's voice called down from on top of the furnace in a raspy whisper.

Kyle froze, unable to do anything.

“Kyle! I see you!”, the voice said in a loud whisper, “Don't come any closer, they will see you!”

Slowly Kyle raised his eyes up to look at Mr Hunter, when their gazes met, Mr. Hunter's held for a minute, then turned away, as he let out a sob. “Oh God! Ohmigod! Not you too! Sh-sh-sh, no don't look Katie, don't look honey!”

Katie could not help but look, seeing Kyle there standing in the dim shadow of a street light, she said, “Did he hear you? Is he one of them?”

Kyle stood up, looking about for the other guy in a long jacket before heading over to the bridge with his bags of food. As he passed the body he saw the fat guy had a hole clean through his head, a neat little dot almost right between the eyes, just a little above them. On the old fashioned wooden planks a black ichor slowly dripped down into the water 15 feet below. As he got close to the metal struts, near the back of the pack of zombies hanging around the furnace supports Katie called down to him.

“What do you want Kyle? Why are you here?”

Looking up at her he raised his hands up.

“Are you drinking a beer?”

Kyle sheepishly nodded, but lowered that hand quickly, still holding the bags up for Katie and her reluctant father to see.

Chuck barked a quick, short laugh, “He sent you huh? To bring us food and stuff?”

Speaking for the first time kyle answered, “N-no! I want to help you get you down and somewhere safe! And find my mom!”

“What? You are not with him? You aren't really?”

Kyle shook his head 'no' and started pushing his way through the zombies to the base of the machines. The other zombies treated Kyle with indifference, focusing only on the warm living things they saw at the top of the machinery. They jostled Kyle and he lost his grip on the beer, then on one of the bags, bending over Kyle let go of the beer, he didn't like it that much, and tried to grab the bags of food he had packed. He succeeded in recovering them, but the food bag broke open, spilling its contents beneath the now frenzied movement of the zombies. Kyle snatched the bread, the first thing he came across and backed out of the mob. Looking up he saw Chuck and Katie watching him. Taking off his pack he reached into the water bag and came out with a Coors.

“I am going to have to throw this to you, okay? One at a time.”

Chuck nodded yes and Kyle wound up and threw with all his might, the can was high, catching Chuck by surprise, however it ricocheted off of the building behind him and fell on top of the platform he and Katie were on. He held it up, the dented can was intact. Nodding he stood up and prepared for Kyle's next throw. It took awhile to throw the remaining 4 bottles of water and 3 beers up to Chuck, in the end they did it with only one water bottle falling to the ground, it started leaking, but Kyle threw it back up anyway. The bread was too light to throw up by itself, but Kyle solved that by putting a few handfuls of gravel in the plastic sack, then tying it off and whirling the whole thing over his head and releasing it like an ancient Sumerian slinger, the bread arrived smashed, but it arrived. Looking through the feet of the gathered zombies kyle made out the peanut butter and jelly jars, still good and recovered and threw them up to Chuck as well.

“No knives?”, Katie asked

Feeling bad for forgetting Kyle, said, “No, I forgot, sorry. I can go get some?”

“No don't worry about it. I do need to you get something else for me though, can you do that?”, asked Chuck, “Something that may save us...all of us.”

“What? I'll get it Chuck, you'll see, I can get it!”

“In our house, it is in our house. In the nightstand that thing by my bed, you know which side is mine in my bed?”

Shaking his head, Kyle said, “No.”

“Well if you are looking at the bed from the doorway it is the left side of the bed, okay? Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay in the nightstand on the bottom is a box, it is locked and heavy, you need to bring it here to me, can you do that? Just bring it quickly before that teen ager gets back here, okay?”

“Yeah Chuck I can do that, is your house locked?”

“Ah, yeah it might be, but you can break a window to get in, you have my permission to do that, in fact don't let anything stand in your way of getting that box back here, okay?”

“Sure Chuck. I will be back before you know it.”, turning to pick up his pack Kyle saw the umbrella and bat sticking up out of it, pulling the umbrella out he turned back to them and said, “Here I brought you this too. For the rain.” He tossed the umbrella with perfect accuracy up to a startled Chuck, who missed catching it, as it dropped Katie's hand shot out and she snagged it out of the air and handed it to her father, who gazed on it with some puzzlement, saying softly to himself, “For the rain?” Shrugging his backpack on Kyle turned and started jogging towards Katie's house, not real sure of what could be in a box that would save everyone. Chuck was an adult though, so maybe he knew more than Kyle did. Kyle sure hoped it would save his mom and dad though.

...back home... next...