Humanity's Death: A Zombie Epic by D.S. Black

while she stared out of the school
buses escape door.
    But that wasn’t what caused him to bring the
Humvee to a screeching halt. As he drove past the Piggly Wiggly, he
saw a tall brunette running with fast even strides into the store;
he knew those legs; he may not have seen them in years, at least
not in person; but he'd know them anywhere.
    “What the hell!” Candy screamed as he brought
the Humvee to a fast stop and jumped. He didn’t say a word or look
back as he ran through the crowd. He moved fast around zombies that
reached out but failed to get hold of his flesh. The store was
cold. And people screamed all around. The aisle dividers lay in the
floor, knocked over like dominoes. He moved his head back and forth
frantically, “Sally! Sally!” He didn’t see her. He ran down the
bread aisle. Nothing but a zombie eating the stomach out of a
little boy. The boy was still alive and screamed for his mother to
stop eating him, to please stop eating him!
    “Sally! Sally!” He ran past the zombie mother
feasting on her son, and ran the frozen foods. There she was. He'd
found her. Oh god, please no... he was too late.
    Sally Fighart’s body, lean and curved with
muscle, pressed against a glass freezer door that once held the
milk. Two dead men chewed into her. One pulled the protein from her
neck in gobs of bloody muscle. The other looked as though he was
humping her leg as he pulled long strands of meat from her torn
skin.
    In those last moments, Miss Fighart, the Olympic
gold medalist, the once breast less and pimple faced little girl,
looked right at Andrew; and for a moment he saw her smile as the
zombies munched into her. Her head jiggled back and forth but her
eyes never left his. From behind him, grabbed him.
    “You’ve lost your fucking mind! You fucking shit
tard!” Candy pulled him along with Jack. He let them guide him past
the dying and screaming people, out the door, back to the Humvee
where Jody sat waiting with his hands on the wheel. The door
slammed as he was forced into the back, and as the Hummer rumbled
away from the screams and mayhem; Andrew wept for his Sally.
    11
    Now Andrew laid on the sled, delirious. The world
around him rushed by in dashes of green and brown. From somewhere
in front of him, though she sounded a thousand miles away, came the
voice of his captor.
    “Dumb worthless hag! Tramp they calls me! I was
once a good woman. They didn’t care bout my past, only bout what
happened. Weren’t my fault. Weren’t my fault what those boys did to
me. Those rich boys back when I was young. Used me up, turned me
out. Now look at em. They all dead. I’m right here.”
    Her words fell on Andrew’s ears in fuzzy wisps,
the sounds barely audible, like some strange and ghoulish nightmare
where he knows he is being pulled to his death but can’t do a damn
thing to stop it. Her black shadow danced over his eyes as he tried
to look up and get a glimpse. But his head couldn’t stay upright
and fell back hard against the sled. So he just stared up at the
green canopy and wept.
    “Tears ain’t gonna save shit boy. I cried once
to, ya know? Didn’t do me a bit of good and it aint gonna do you
either. Yous just a boy. And boys hurt girls like me. They use em
up and spit em out. Not now though. Oh no. Good lords done gone and
turned the tide. Now I bring the tears and causin the pain.”
    Andrew’s sobs continued. The jerk of the sled
jostled him around. He felt a powerful dose of nausea and green
bile erupt from his mouth. He couldn’t turn to spit it out and it
began filling up his throat and causing a sickening garbling
noise.
    “Oh no you don’t boy! Not that easy!” The woman
came to a stop and walked over to Andrew. His body was turned to
the side and old hands slapped his back hard, causing the bile to
spill out of his mouth and onto the ground.
    “Thatta a boy. Can’t let ya spoil. You fine meat
son. Hell, we alls just meat.”
    His vision cleared and he was left on his side
as she