The Day I Met Evan Bishop

My sister and I had just spent the last month in an underground bunker while the world above us collapsed.

What’s more?

Now infected bodies roam the streets and to make matters worse.

We were surrounded and our weapons weren’t working.

“What’s wrong with the stupid guns?” Lauren yelled.

“I don’t know,” I said. I kept pulling the useless trigger and watching as the body moved towards us unharmed.

“Well do something!” she said.

I dropped the rifle I was holding, letting the sling keep it from hitting the ground, and I pulled the axe from my b belt, bringing it up with both hands ready to make the strike.

When I hesitated.

I tried to focus on the pale skin, the far away eyes, the limp mouth, its slow, shuffling gait, and the odd angle at which it kept its arms, but I could only see the other things.

I couldn’t do it. They were still people to me.

There were more coming, making their way into the alley, at least twenty. Some snarled like mad dogs.

This is how we would die.

I felt Lauren push past me, bringing the machete up and planting it in the skull of the nearest man. The blade slipped out, covered in red cerebral matter, small droplets of blood running to the ground, and she took the blade and swung it again, burying it deeper into the head of the man that once lived among us.

“Are you just going to just stand there?” she said.

I snapped out of the daze and ran next to her as she moved onto her next victim. More were coming.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?”

Close to twenty-five of the infected were in the alley now.

The space between us and the dead was slowly shrinking.

“There’s too many of them,” Lauren said. We were separated, each confined to a small circle. I lost the axe as it lodged into the shoulder of one of the creatures, leaving me with only one of the knives I took from Troy’s house.

Lauren fell to the ground, and continued to swing at their legs. Several of the bodies fell down too, each one moaning and reaching for the lost limb.

“Get off me, Get off me” she kept yelling.

I tried to get to her. She was on her back swinging wildly, no longer aiming just trying to make contact with something.

So this is how it ended. I would watch the last member of my family die in front of me, ripped limb from limb while I waited to be eaten.

I was listening to what I thought were her last screams when it fell out of the sky.

It was both so random and precise that I was convinced I imagined it, as the arrow hit the infected man in the head. Its head blew outward as the broad head punched through its face. Several more dropped out of the sky, like the first raindrops of a thunderstorm, hitting more of them. Bodies dropped, seven by my count. I could reach Lauren, after the mysterious arrows cleared a path. The rest of the zombies didn’t notice their fallen comrades and continued towards us.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She looked at me, her eyes were wide and face pale, “It was going to eat me” she said, “it was going to bite me,” her voice was getting softer, “It was…”. I tried to pick her up, she hung lose in my arms.

Three more arrows fell. From behind an overturned car, I saw their origin. Dressed in a dark jacket with the hood pulled up, a man was firing arrows at the zombies. He dropped the bow and started running towards us; he was holding something in his hands and as he approached he tossed the object over the group and I heard something land and skitter down the alley.

With a pop, and a shower of sparks, the device came to life. He had lit a firecracker, and the sparkling, whistling spectacle drew the interest of the horde. A few of the diseased people still came after us. I looked desperately for one of the weapons and found Lauren’s machete. With most of the horde moving towards the new distraction, only a small group was preoccupied with us. I stood, setting Lauren down and keeping the weapon in my hands. But, I was too late. The man was on them. He pulled a hatchet and a hammer from his belt and proceeded to dispatch a group of seven zombies, without the benefit of firearms, in less time than it would have Lauren and I could take down two. He was a maestro conducting a symphony of savage butchery.

“Did she get bit?” the stranger asked, his hand rested on the butt of a pistol in a holster.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Get her up, we need to move,” he said. He went back to the fallen bodies and plucked the arrows out of their heads.

“This way,” were the only directions he gave.

We followed him through a neighborhood.

“I cleared this one earlier today,” he said, “we should be safe here for a while.” The front door was boarded and there was another piece of lumber laying in front of the entrance with several nails hammered into it so they pointed upward. The man bent down and examined the nails and once the board was moved he used his hammer to remove the nailed in two by four.

The house was small, dropping his equipment on the floor. “Let’s see that leg,” he said and Lauren sat on the floor while he flipped open a knife and cut part way up her jeans. “The skin’s not broken. I don’t think he actually touched you. You’re lucky I followed that herd into the alley, most of the time I try to give them a wide berth.”

He took off his jacket, revealing for the first time the man who saved our lives. He looked like a man used to rough living, his face gaunt, skin stretched over rippled muscle, and several days worth of stubble on his face. What surprised me the most was his age. For someone who remained so calm, I expected someone much older than I, but he was young, at most two years older than I was.

He removed the glove on his right hand; a three-finger model used for bow hunting, and extended it. I will remember forever the first time I heard him say it, “My name is Evan Bishop.”

The grease lamp flickered, its soft yellow flame made the shadows dance around us. Evan had been watching in silence as I scribbled page after page. Every once in a while, he would grab a sheet and read it over, nodding in approval. His comments were rare, and encouraging when they did come. He held Lauren’s heart shaped locket while he read.

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“What?”

“If Lauren was bitten, and I was sitting there in the street holding her and you came up on us like you did, and she had been bitten. What would you have done?” I asked again.

“You know what I would’ve done. I’d shoot her right then and there, most likely would’ve had to shoot you too.”

The flame flickered again and I went back to writing.