Roaming Dead, Roaming Undead

“More dangerous than the undead roaming is the live one watching. Flower Mound Station out.”

Heather dropped her box of supplies and the canned goods clattered all over the basement floor. The metallic clanging echoed sharply off the musty, sludge-covered walls. She dropped to her knees to pick everything up and Sherry rushed to her side, attempting to help.

“I got it, I got it.” Heather collected her cans and other supplies quickly.

She tossed the box back onto the table, chest heaving, catching her breath. Chuck and Matteo were on the other side of the room holding their respective boxes, staring at Heather with confusion.

“I thought you said everyone died at the Flower Mound Station,” Chuck said.

“They did.” Heather stared at the radio in the corner.

“And you said that all the equipment was destroyed,” Matteo added.

“It was.”

Sherry shuffled over to her box of supplies, tossed in a few more cans, and fidgeted with the corners of it until tiny pieces of cardboard ripped free. They fell to the floor next to a pile of mice droppings. The basement was heavy with silence as no one knew what to say to Heather next.

“I watched the… undead… enter,” Heather said shakily. “My teammates… there wasn’t time to warn them. The undead were on them in a flash. And through the struggle, the equipment was demolished beyond repair. There was nothing for me to stay for, so while the zombies were preoccupied I…”

Heather sobbed softly into her box. The only sounds in the basement were her sniffles and stifled whimpers. Chuck and Matteo glanced at each other uncomfortably. Sherry rubbed Heather’s shoulder and went to say something comforting, but Heather pulled her shoulder away. She wiped her face clean, snatched her box off the table, and said they should all leave.

Heather made her way to the door. Chuck repeated her commands as if he was still in charge, and the three followed her out.

It was about a six-hour walk to Flower Mound from Denton. Denton was known to be a place with plenty of supplies leftover in the various bunkers and places with basements. Chuck, Matteo, and Sherry had all come across one another in Oklahoma City while getting supplies, and since they were all heading south to various parts in Texas, they figured they’d stick together. 

They’d reached the outskirts of Denton and had run into Heather, freshly escaped from the attack on the Flower Mound Center. It was the only one left in Texas, and one of only 36 left in the entire country. Now there were only 35 centers left with brave souls warning the remaining Americans of incoming waves of zombies.

Heather led the way down the cracked and crooked street, right down the center, abandoned cars and charred bicycles more common than picket fences. It was common knowledge to walk in the centers of streets. Not a single car was running anymore, and the zombies could be difficult to see if they were camouflaged with any of their surroundings. Heather hobbled along with a confident, yet compromised march. Her left ankle and yellowy-brown bruise on the back. Her uniform was in near mint condition, but her black hair was a mess.

“So, where are we going?” Chuck asked, following along close to Heather.

“Well, Matteo lives in Dallas…” Heather started to explain.

"Waxachie, just outside of Dallas,” Matteo corrected.

“Whatever. So, we head to Dallas, drop him off. Then, we carry on to Austin where your family is… and mine… and then Sherry continues on to Houston for whatever fucking reason.”

“They have great communities for people with no families in Houston,” Sherry said softly. “And I can contribute. I can help. I want to pitch in… like you did.”

Heather scoffed. “Believe me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. They tell you that you’re there and you can’t leave no matter what. And it’s fine when you think your family is dead, but then… look, it’s a shitshow, alright? I got lucky to get out. My associates were not.”

“So, you only did it because you thought your family was all gone?” Sherry asked.

“Yes and no. I wanted to help too.”

“When did you find out your family wasn’t gone?”

“A day after I fled the place,” Heather looked down at the pavement as she walked. “Once I saw my associates all… and the equipment was destroyed, I left. First stop was outside Denton, found out from other travelers. Stayed to get supplies, bumped into you guys the next day.”

“Fortuitous timing, huh?” Sherry chuckled.

Heather didn’t respond.

The plan that Heather explained was the same plan that the three had before she showed up. It was how Matteo and Chuck would get back to their families, and how Sherry would find her new home. But with the transmission playing from the center in Flower Mound, that should have changed everything!

That’s what Chuck was insisting. Heather was resistant, but Chuck insisted that they needed to go back to her center. How else could a broadcast have come from that place if all the equipment was destroyed and everyone there was killed? There had to be a survivor. Heather repeated the horrific scene she had witnessed and said no one could have survived it.

“Well, something’s going on,” Chuck said. “I think we have to go back to Flower Mound first. Figure out what’s going on.”

“There’s no one there!” Heather shouted. “I don’t want to see all my friends in that state!”

“Fine! Then, you stay outside, me and Matteo and Sherry will go in and scope the situation out! If the center still works, people will want to know. We can spread the word and maybe a new team of people can go and work out of there.”

As much as Heather resisted the idea of this new plan, it didn’t matter, because Matteo was now agreeing with Chuck. The two were loud and obnoxious, but when they teamed up together, they were a convincing force. Sherry agreed that it made sense, but tried to do so in as kind a manner as she could for Heather’s sake. Heather finally agreed, and the group set their eyes on Flower Mound.

Sherry placed her hand on Heather’s shoulder and rubbed it slowly. Heather swatted her hand away and picked up her pace. Before Sherry could apologize, Heather stopped in her tracks and held her arms out! Everyone froze.

Heavy footsteps crunched on dry leaves in the distance. The group checked their surroundings. There were several houses in their immediate vicinity, every single one of them with fallen, dry leaves. Every tree in the area was bare, branches outstretched like beckoning hands whispering that they’d protect the group. But one of those trees was lying.

More crunching on dry leaves, louder now. It was several pairs of feet. And several mouths growling and groaning.

From the left.

Heather ushered them to the right. They dashed along a driveway, avoiding every leaf that they could, and then found a rickety shed in a backyard to hide in. They pulled the creaking door shut and hid in the darkness of the musty, unattended building. Through the cracks in the door, they could see three zombies emerge from behind one of the houses, heads sweeping the neighborhood lazily, searching for food.

The zombies looked in the direction of their shed. Sherry instinctively backed up and slammed her back into a rake hanging on the wall. It toppled from its place and plummeted to the floor. Heather snapped her arm out and grabbed it, but not before part of it clanged into the floor. The zombies’ heads rose in an attentive manner. Their undead eyes zeroed in on the shed, and then their three bodies staggered towards it. The four panicked, searching for a solution! Matteo pointed out the small window in the back, but none of them would be able to fit through it.

Something small could, though.

The zombies stumbled along the yard in a quicker manner, nearing the shed. Chuck found a tennis ball on the floor, opened the window, and tossed it out into the woods. The tennis ball bounced off a tree and the zombies moaned with curiosity, and redirected for the trees.

Once they were out of sight, the group of four silently vacated the shed and returned to the street, scurrying away like frightened mice. Heather and Chuck led the group, faces like they’d eaten rotten fruit, refusing to look back Sherry’s way. Matteo walked behind them and Sherry trailed him by several feet. A slow wind blew through and tussled her wavy hair, but she dared not fix it for fear she might fuck something else up.

Heather and Chuck led the group to a main road and they continued their trek. The buildings of businesses past still stood, but their innards were sad sacks of loneliness. Small markets had rotting piles of food in the windows, creating a heavenly playground for the flies. An electronics store had been destroyed and looted. Dozens of other stores were in horrendous shape with flickering lights inside and blood-stained floors and broken windows. The sky was a nasty, dirty gray that made the gray of the buildings pop as if it was neon.

The group stepped around the various carcasses decorating the street, most of them human, all of them without heads. They avoided the puddles of dried blood, not because it was gross, but because sticky shoes made too much noise. The smog and clouds were lightest directly above them, which meant that the sun was directly above them.

They turned down several more streets, finding another wide main road to trek down. This one had less cars and buildings to hide out into if need be, but the carcasses of people were aplenty. Heather and Chuck still led the way, and Sherry still brought up the rear. She had to constantly scan behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed.

“More dangerous than the undead roaming is the live one watching. Blood is thicker than the duty for some. Flower Mound Station out.”

“Turn that thing off!” Heather snapped. “You’ll give away our position.”

Matteo turned it off. “There’s still transmissions coming from Flower Mound. What do you think is happening?”

“No idea.” Heather never turned around.

She quickened her pace and the other three had to kick it into overdrive to keep up. The smog and clouds were lightest closer to the horizon, so the sun behind the clouds was dipping, and it was close to sunset. They had to be nearing Flower Mound.

Loud moaning sounds soured the skies and the group froze. They were strange sounds that they’d never heard before. Their surroundings were getting so dark that it was difficult to make out details beyond 100 feet. Moving behind a building in the distance… several figures.

“Are they wolves?” Matteo asked.

“You ever see wolves walk on their hind legs?” Heather hissed.

The figures disappeared into an incoming fog. It was silent for a while and a chill rolled over their goosebump-riddled skin, so they pushed on.

The signs for Flower Mound appeared out of the fog, and the group breathed a collective sigh of relief. Heather kept fidgeting with her jacket, trying to pull it tighter, zipping, unzipping, unsure where to find her comfort zone. Sherry considered offering a helping hand, but then decided against it and remained at the back of the group.

Feet scuffled along quickly behind them and Sherry snapped her neck back. Her sudden scratching of shoes on the pavement alerted the other three. They froze and watched Sherry watching the road stretching far behind them. There was no movement, and no other sounds besides a soft howling of the wind.

At least, they all hoped it was the wind.

It wasn’t long after that they found the Flower Mound Center. Heather was fidgeting with her jacket more and finally yanked the entire thing off, revealing her sinewy, strong arms, another bruise stained her right tricep. Chuck was about to announce his plan, a look of confidence plastered to his face, and Heather cut him off before he could talk.

“You guys stay out here,” Heather said. “I’m going to go in there and figure out what’s going on.”

“What? Are you sure?”

Chuck tried to reason with Heather, saying she probably wouldn’t be able to handle seeing her friends in that state again. Heather called him a series of curse words that ended with “bloated asshole” and caused Matteo to snort. While Chuck examined his own belly, Heather said that she was more equipped to handle these sights than any of the other three. She’d worked at this center for a long time, and she’d seen things they couldn’t imagine. She further explained that she could determine what equipment was still working and none of them would know what to look for, so they’d be useless inside.

“The three of you will serve as better lookouts.”

Sherry nodded, refusing to disagree out loud, even though she felt like they should have kept themselves in pairs for protection. Heather walked slowly up the pathway towards the center. Sherry, Matteo, and Chuck kept their backs to one another, constantly scanning their surroundings for anyone, alive or undead, approaching their position.

Nothing but bare trees surrounded their position.

Sherry’s foot caught something on the ground and she looked down. There was a postcard wedged underneath a boulder. She slid it out and examined it. It was addressed to Heather… from her family.

“Didn’t Heather say she found out her family was alive from travelers in Denton?” Sherry asked.

“Yup. Why?” Matteo looked over.

“She got a postcard from her family sent here.”

“Maybe she just got confused and forgot that she found out as she left here or something.”

"This was addressed in August. Two and a half months ago. No way it took that long to reach this spot.”

Chuck finally spun around to see what they were looking at. “What are you suggesting?”

“She found out her family was still alive while she was here. Not after.”

“Just because it’s here doesn’t mean she saw it, dumbass!” Chuck ripped the postcard from Sherry’s hand.

The three saw bloody fingerprints on the postcard.

“Oh, shit, sorry, you bleeding, Sher?” Chuck examined her fingers.

Sherry turned them over. Not a scratch on her. In fact, it was the best her hands had looked for months. A blinding flash of light accompanied with a high-voltage boom from the center caught their attention. Orange light flashed from inside twice more, and then a low frequency blast flew from the building and shot through them. Sherry felt her innards turn and she almost dropped.

Chuck ran for the building. Matteo and Sherry chased after him.

They burst into the center to see Heather in the middle of the room, eyes wide open, jaw hanging so low it nearly scraped her chest. The radio equipment had a blue-gray orb bubbled up around it as electricity crackled out of it in serpent-like bolts.

Chuck ran for the radio equipment, and the orb transformed into the shape of a blue-gray man in army fatigues. Chuck tried to stop in his tracks as the translucent man with a blonde crewcut swung a mighty arm. The strike cracked Chuck's neck back, he lost his balance, fell, and his chin came down on a table and snapped his neck in a position it wasn't supposed to go.

Sherry froze. Matteo darted for another set of radio equipment, intent to make a distress call and save them. Two more blue-gray orbs appeared in front of him, taking the shapes of a man and a woman, army fatigues, bullet holes polka-dotting their abdomens. The people transformed back into orbs and flew at Matteo like a heavy wind, knocking him backwards. A door behind him opened, revealing a steep staircase, and he tumbled down it headfirst. As his lifeless body landed at the bottom of the staircase, the door slammed shut.

Sherry didn't move. She just watched.

Heather backed herself into a corner, hand resting on the radio equipment, fingers nearing a switch. The original three blue-gray orbs and two more whooshed past Sherry and stopped in front of Heather, taking the form of five people in their army fatigues. Heather's fingers neared closer and closer to the switch on the radio.

The five blue-gray, translucent people stepped over five dead bodies that had been rotting for days, all wearing army fatigues. An emptied pistol and shells from bullets laid next to them. Electric bolts crackled from every machine in the place, a low hum accompanying them. Heather inched her fingers so close to the switch.

“More dangerous than the undead roaming is the live one watching. The one that won't obey sworn duties."

"I wanted to see my family," Heather whimpered.

"Flower Mound Station out.”

An explosion of electricity burst from the radio behind Heather and ran through her body. Her frame seized violently until it was fried and dead, and she collapsed to the floor. The five beings turned to face Sherry.

"The Flower Mound Station must be run. It must warn the others."

Sherry gulped hard. "Can I help?"