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Authors: ed. Jeremy C. Shipp
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as they screamed for help from the helicopters racing overhead.
For two days he and his twelve year old daughter Sarah had wandered the wreckage in a numb stupor, chased ever onward in a blind frenzy of helplessness by the living dead and the looters and the flood waters. Shots rang out constantly. The bodies of deer and dogs and human beings festooned the limbs of fallen trees. And worst of all, they were unable to tell the difference between those bloated, lifeless corpses bobbing in the water and the infected zombies that could seem part of the trash, but were in fact only waiting for someone to come too close. All the hospitals had become necropolises, and they learned quickly to avoid those. The flooded houses, too—for the moans coming from the attics were not all made by the living, and they could never be sure when a submerged section of a roof had been punched through by the limbs of a live oak or a snapped telephone pole, allowing the zombies an easy place to hide.
On the morning of the third day they saw a bass boat appear from behind the leafy top of an upturned pecan tree. A National Guardsman with a rifle was waving them on.
Turning to Sarah, Canavan stuck out his hand. She was holding a pink backpack by the straps, splashing frantically as she struggled to keep up. “Come on,” he shouted at her. “They’re right there.”
The girl was exhausted, and every word out of her mouth took the form of a plaintive whining that at first had touched the atavistic protectiveness all fathers possess for their daughters but now met only with an impatient hardness and more shouting.
“Daddy, help me.”
“Come on, move!”
A zombie sprang out from beneath the canopy of an immature live oak right next to Canavan, and in a moment of pure base fear Canavan leapt onto the roof of a nearby car. He spun around, only to see his daughter bent forward at the waist, her hands reaching for him, her eyes flashing with fear as the dead man strapped his arms across her middle and pulled her down.
She sank beneath the debris-strewn water yelling, “Dad-dy! Dad-dy!” and he reached for her, but she was already gone.
“No!” he shouted. “No.”
He scanned the water, unable to believe what had just happened, when more of the living dead emerged from the water.
Another wave of burning ash hit his skin and he swatted at his face.
The memory of Houston vanished and he was back in the dusty ruins of downtown San Antonio, disoriented at first because the memory had seemed so vivid and so very horrible. A small crowd of zombies, about a dozen or so, were closing on him. There were more behind them, picking their way through the rubble of a collapsed building.
With his mind still numb with guilt and loss for Sarah, he raised his pistol and tried to fire.
Nothing happened.
Confused, he looked at the weapon. It took him a moment to figure out it was empty.
He had two more magazines on his thigh next to his holster and muscle memory took over as he ejected the spent magazine, slapped a fresh one into the receiver, and released the slide.
Canavan fired through his second magazine and reloaded the third.
Moaning behind him.
He turned and saw another badly burned zombie coming toward him, trailing a shredded leg. Canavan pointed the gun at the zombie’s head and fired until it fell. Then he dropped his hands to his side and staggered off into the swirling clouds of ash and dust, the moans of the dead trailing away behind him.
* * * * *
He walked on until he heard the sounds of a woman sobbing.
It was coming from a white stone building with all the windows on the first six stories blasted out. The lobby on the ground floor was littered with plaster and garbage, lath visible through the walls. There was an acrid, dusty taste of aerosolized concrete and ash in the air that collected in Canavan’s mouth, leaving his tongue dry, like it was wearing a sock.
Looking in through one of the
For two days he and his twelve year old daughter Sarah had wandered the wreckage in a numb stupor, chased ever onward in a blind frenzy of helplessness by the living dead and the looters and the flood waters. Shots rang out constantly. The bodies of deer and dogs and human beings festooned the limbs of fallen trees. And worst of all, they were unable to tell the difference between those bloated, lifeless corpses bobbing in the water and the infected zombies that could seem part of the trash, but were in fact only waiting for someone to come too close. All the hospitals had become necropolises, and they learned quickly to avoid those. The flooded houses, too—for the moans coming from the attics were not all made by the living, and they could never be sure when a submerged section of a roof had been punched through by the limbs of a live oak or a snapped telephone pole, allowing the zombies an easy place to hide.
On the morning of the third day they saw a bass boat appear from behind the leafy top of an upturned pecan tree. A National Guardsman with a rifle was waving them on.
Turning to Sarah, Canavan stuck out his hand. She was holding a pink backpack by the straps, splashing frantically as she struggled to keep up. “Come on,” he shouted at her. “They’re right there.”
The girl was exhausted, and every word out of her mouth took the form of a plaintive whining that at first had touched the atavistic protectiveness all fathers possess for their daughters but now met only with an impatient hardness and more shouting.
“Daddy, help me.”
“Come on, move!”
A zombie sprang out from beneath the canopy of an immature live oak right next to Canavan, and in a moment of pure base fear Canavan leapt onto the roof of a nearby car. He spun around, only to see his daughter bent forward at the waist, her hands reaching for him, her eyes flashing with fear as the dead man strapped his arms across her middle and pulled her down.
She sank beneath the debris-strewn water yelling, “Dad-dy! Dad-dy!” and he reached for her, but she was already gone.
“No!” he shouted. “No.”
He scanned the water, unable to believe what had just happened, when more of the living dead emerged from the water.
Another wave of burning ash hit his skin and he swatted at his face.
The memory of Houston vanished and he was back in the dusty ruins of downtown San Antonio, disoriented at first because the memory had seemed so vivid and so very horrible. A small crowd of zombies, about a dozen or so, were closing on him. There were more behind them, picking their way through the rubble of a collapsed building.
With his mind still numb with guilt and loss for Sarah, he raised his pistol and tried to fire.
Nothing happened.
Confused, he looked at the weapon. It took him a moment to figure out it was empty.
He had two more magazines on his thigh next to his holster and muscle memory took over as he ejected the spent magazine, slapped a fresh one into the receiver, and released the slide.
Canavan fired through his second magazine and reloaded the third.
Moaning behind him.
He turned and saw another badly burned zombie coming toward him, trailing a shredded leg. Canavan pointed the gun at the zombie’s head and fired until it fell. Then he dropped his hands to his side and staggered off into the swirling clouds of ash and dust, the moans of the dead trailing away behind him.
* * * * *
He walked on until he heard the sounds of a woman sobbing.
It was coming from a white stone building with all the windows on the first six stories blasted out. The lobby on the ground floor was littered with plaster and garbage, lath visible through the walls. There was an acrid, dusty taste of aerosolized concrete and ash in the air that collected in Canavan’s mouth, leaving his tongue dry, like it was wearing a sock.
Looking in through one of the
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