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Regrettable Circumstances: Episode 1, Part 1

Leon parked his truck in his garage and closed the garage door, and went inside his house. He had just gotten done with a particularly hard job, cutting down a 35 foot tree and removing it one truck-load at a time. He was tired, sweaty, and sore. He had also hurt his hand working on the tree, and so he went directly to the bathroom and washed his injury and bandaged it. What he did to it could hardly be called bandaging, though; he just tore up an old tee shirt and used it for bandages. But it did the job. Before long he fell asleep on the couch in the living room. When he woke up he looked at the clock. It was now almost 5. He yawned, sat up and turned on the television and switched the channel to Syfy. Night of the Living Dead was on, and at the time it didn't mean anything to him, but by the end of the day he would never want to see another zombie again, real or not.

Just as the black man locked himself in the cellar, the movie was interrupted by a "very important newscast". "Breaking news... there is nearly city-wide rioting. Harold Dickensen, the Chief of Police says to the residents of the city of Newcastle to please stay inside. Lock your doors, block your windows to protect yourself, don't let anybody into your home, and go outside under no circumstances. When asked what he thought was causing the rioting, all Dickensen would tell reporters was 'no comment'." By this time, Leon became confused. Only 5 hours ago the city was just fine, could things really go to hell in a hand-basket in less than a single day? He got up and went to the window and looked outside, and saw a scene of utter brutality. People in their yards fighting savagely, pulling hair, punching, even biting each other. He quickly decided to secure his house against these maniacs. He had no nails or actual building materials or he could have done better, but all he could do was push a couch against the door and lean a table against the dining-room window and wedge a chair against it. He went up to his bedroom upstairs and got his shotgun from the closet, and opened the barrels to see if it was loaded. Both barrels were loaded. He reached in the bottom of the closet and grabbed the last 5 shells. He had used the other 35 shells shooting targets out in the desert only a week ago. He ran down the stairs and went back in the living room. He stopped a moment to think, but became dismayed when he saw what was happening... the door was being pounded on madly by the rioters, and he could hear the window cracking. He stood for a moment frozen with fear. 7 shotgun shells wouldn't take down so many people. He ran to the kitchen, deciding to grab as much food as he could and get as far from the city as possible. Before he could finish even getting a single can from the cupboard, there was a loud crash, and he knew exactly what it was. He looked, and saw that the door had given way, at long last, to the horde of rioters, and the window as well. There was a large mob forming in the living room and dining room and headed right for him. He turned and ran straight out to the garage. He was going to open the garage door when the mob reached the door between the kitchen and garage. One of them lunged at him, so he ran to his truck and jumped into it, throwing the shotgun onto the seat beside him and starting the truck. He put it in 2nd gear, nearly floored it, and let off the clutch very quickly. The truck rammed through the garage door like it was nothing.

The streets were a scene of horrifying chaos. Bodies littered the street, and the next-door neighbor's house was ablaze, with a wrecked car sticking half way through the kitchen wall. Against his better judgment he floored it, going up through the gears until he was going 40 mph. He made it only a few yards down the street after hitting 40, then his luck ran out. His front tire lost its grip in the slimy mess of bodies and he lost control. The truck jumped the curb. He slammed on the brakes but it didn't do much good. The truck slided across the wet grass, went through a garage door, and collided with a small white Chevy Malibu at about 30 mph. The steering wheel seemed to jump at him, and a blinding white pain went through his face as his nose made contact with the upper rim of the steering wheel and made a sickening crunch, and blood went everywhere. In a daze he put the truck in reverse and punched the gas... but nothing happened. It took him a moment to realize that the engine wasn't running anymore. He looked around the street quickly, almost in a panic and dazed from the pain in his broken nose, and saw more rioters coming at the truck, and they were very close. He turned the key, and the engine wouldn't catch. He tried again, pumping the gas like crazy, but nothing happened. It was then that he did something he would never want to do again... he opened the door, grabbed the shotgun, and left his beloved truck behind. He ran down the street like he had never run before. He was looking over his shoulder when he bumped into someone. He turned in time to see him. The largest bobcat he had ever seen grabbed him by the neck and began choking the life out of him, wrestling him to the ground. He was just starting to black out when he pulled the trigger of the shotgun and watched the bobcat's face disintegrate into a bloody spray. While the bobcat was choking Leon, he didn't notice what he was putting under his chin. Leon dropped the body on the ground and continued running. He ran hard for almost another minute. When he finally got to the entrance of the complex, he turned around, out of energy and choking on his own air. The rioters had slowed down and were almost half a mile away. Leon took the time to remove the shell from the left barrel and put in a new one. He didn't use the right one. 6 shells left. He began walking down the street, and what he saw was an even more horrendous scene of death and destruction. A burning semi was sitting in the middle of the road, its gasoline tanker blown entirely in half, a crashed helicopter stuck in the side of a burning building, and mounds and mounds of corpses. Bloody, torn, corpses. He simply couldn't get over the fact that things had gotten so out of hand in Newcastle so quickly, so he sat on the curb for a minute and thought for what felt like an hour. Finally he got up and began walking towards the outskirts of town.

He walked down the street for what felt like eternity and came to the front of a gun store. He debated with himself about going inside it, his nose hurt like hell and his feet hurt from walking for so long and so far. No signs of life at all so far, only the dead. He decided to look in the window and see what was inside. After looking for a minute or so he decided to go inside, there wasn't a sign of life inside at all. Against the odds, Leon's luck held up quite well. The inside of the gun store was a mess but apparently no one had time to loot it extensively because most of the guns were still on their racks and a lot of the ammunition remained untouched. He took his time going through it and found some very useful things... a black duffel bag large enough to carry all the weight he could carry. He grabbed 400 shotgun shells, a brand new .357 Revolver with 400 .357 bullets, a semi-automatic version of the AK-47 along with 400 7.62mm rounds, and a hunting knife. His luck held up enough to safely make it back outside carrying the 55 pound duffel.

Sitting across the street was something he didn't notice on his way into the store, a car that wasn't entirely destroyed. He wasn't sure whether or not it was considered wrong to take a car anymore but he decided he would. He walked up to the Nissan Sentra and tried the door. Leon's heart sank as he suddenly realized he ran out of luck; it was locked. He debated with himself for a moment whether to break the window or keep walking, and finally decided he didn't like walking much, so he used the butt of his shotgun as a club and smashed the window which shattered entirely on the first swing. Luckily the car alarm didn't go off, so he unlocked the door and sat down in the driver's seat. He looked around for a key, but there didn't seem to be one anywhere, so he decided to try and hot wire it. He managed to get it to turn over, but soon realized why the car was sitting here, the gas tank was entirely empty. Walking became once again his only option. Now that he had a decent set of weapons, he could either try to go back and recover his truck or hoof it out of town. "I ain't leavin' mah truck sittin' with them assholes back there, no way IN HELL!" He turned around back towards the downtown area and towards his old home, and began walking again.

Leon finally got to the housing complex as the sun was setting. Just as he had feared, the streets were no longer empty once he got closer to the housing complex. Just when he got within sight of the main gates, he saw a huge mob. The way down the side of the complex was clear, but he would have to be silent as a ninja to get there without being noticed. He took a single step forward and bumped against a trash can in the street. He slammed his forehead for being an idiot and cursed, and noticed a wall of rioters coming towards him, alerted by the hollow drumming of the empty trash can. Well so much for being quiet. He raised the AK-47 and prepared to fire...

Leon pulled the trigger of the AK so fast that it was almost as if it was fully-automatic, as one after another fell, the mob didn't shrink. It was then that Leon saw something that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The bodies in the streets began to move. A dead reptile moved just next to him, and it saw him with it's dead eye, the other eye missing along with half its face. It let out a ghastly hiss. He realized just then that it wasn't a riot, it was the undead. He ran as fast as he could around the side of the housing complex and around the back, near where he crashed his truck. He was confident that his truck wasn't destroyed, but simply stalled, and he decided if he could just get to it he could start it and get out of there. He jumped on top of a dumpster that was up against the eight foot tall white brick wall, and looked first behind him, then in front. Behind him was a wall of the living dead, blocking any escape. There was no turning back now.

Leon's luck was astounding. He looked over the wall and saw that the streets were entirely deserted inside the complex, and the road between him and his truck was totally clear. He jumped the wall and ran for it. He looked around, and it seemed all the gunfire drew them all out the gate. Leon was incredibly lucky. He jumped in his truck again, throwing the duffel full of guns on the floor of the passenger side, and tried to start it. It wouldn't fire. He pumped the gas madly again as he saw the first of the undead coming in the gate almost a mile ahead. He had plenty of time to get it started so he kept at it, realizing that the only way out was blocked by the undead, and that he would most certainly die without the metal cocoon of his vehicle to protect him. After a few moments he heard it starting to catch, then it fired to life. He slammed it into reverse, now heedless of his broken nose, and ripped free of the Malibu. He put it in forward gear and proceeded towards the only exit and an army of undead monsters at a steady 25 mph. He heard a disgusting fleshy crunch as he ran over the first zombie, and put it into second gear to slow down and crawl through the mob. They pounded on the windows and doors but couldn't get in. He pushed through the mob and listened to their bones as they crunched. He almost vomited but held fast. Finally he was through the mob, and began going down the street at a steady 35 mph towards the outskirts of town once more. His spirits were lifted, though, because he and his beloved truck were together again. After a moment's thought, he decided that he should stop by the Sheriff's Department on the way out of town and search for a radio so he could contact any other survivors once he got out of town. He thought about stopping at the Newcastle Police Department, but it was too far into the center of town, which was so risky he decided not to go there. He would only go to the Sheriff's Dept. He drove for five minutes and he could see the Sheriff's Dept... or what was left of it. Corpses littered the lawn around the building, and windows were broken, doors were knocked off their hinges, police cruisers were wrecked all over, but at least the building was still standing. He looked closer at the building, but he couldn't tell whether anyone was inside or not, undead or otherwise. He drove across the lawn, in a low gear for traction. A wave of the undead heard his engine and began to pour through the destroyed door. He decided that getting a radio wasn't as important now as he thought it had been, so he put it in reverse, quickly turned around, and took off towards the edge of town, which was close now. The closer to the outskirts he got the less severe the damage became, but it was never gone. It remained a constant reminder of what had happened in the last several hours. As he drove past all the narrow side streets he looked as hard as he could, searching for survivors, but there was no sign of life at all, only the dead and those who didn't stay dead. Finally, he came to a deserted field outside of town several miles. There was no damage or chaos there, but he could see nothing at all except for a farmhouse to the left and endless rows of corn to the right. He drove up to the farmhouse and was reaching for the ignition to turn the truck off, when he noticed something in the window that gave him a sense of hope. He turned his truck off and got out, walking up to the window and wondering what it was. It was a candle, lit to light the inside of the house. It seems the power finally failed.

He knocked on the door and waited for a moment, when a man opened the door and gave him a very confused look. We stood there for a minute and Leon finally asked him, "Well, are ya gonna let me in or tell me to get the hell outta here?" He looked at me for another long moment, his expression almost puzzled, then shut the door slowly, a soft click sounding as the door secured shut. Leon stood there wondering what came next. He decided to pound on the door some more. The confused man didn't answer it again. Leon went up to the open window and saw him inside, sitting in a chair. "Something real bad is happening in the city, mister, and I might be the last person ya ever see again, might wanna let me in!" he yelled. That seemed to change the confused man's demeanor somewhat. He got up and went to the door and let him in. Leon walked in slowly, sensing that something was wrong, yet feeling safe enough to relax for the first time in more than three hours.

The confused man took Leon to the living room without a word and motioned to a chair, and they both sat down almost at the same time. Leon was getting a horrible feeling from his silence, and the baffled look on his face. He said, "Well, what in the hell is goin' on around here?" that's when things got bad...

The confused man began to foam at the mouth and convulse only seconds after Leon questioned him, and he dropped to the floor. It became apparent that this man was infected. It took Leon a moment to realize that he left all of the guns in the truck, and the confused man was between him and the door. Leon would have to act fast if he were to survive this...

He didn't act fast enough, before he could step forward even once, the confused man quit convulsing and began getting up. He had obviously turned into one of them now. Leon grabbed the lamp off the table between the chairs and smashed it on the side of his head before he could do anything. It had exactly the outcome he hoped it would. The shattering porcelain cut open his cheek and forehead, and a satisfying crack could be heard as his skull fractured. The confused man stood a moment looking at him more dumbfound than ever, then dropped to the floor and lay still. Leon decided at that point that he had found his next home. He dragged the body out back of the old farm house and dug a shallow grave with the small shovel from the behind-the-cab tool box on his truck. It wasn't very deep, but it would serve the purpose. After nearly half an hour of digging in the hard, gravelly soil, he was finally satisfied and dropped the body in and covered it up. Leon said a brief prayer as he looked into the darkening late-evening sky, and quickly set-to getting ready for the night. Judging by how close this house was to the city it could possibly be a very bad night.

Leon went out to the truck and grabbed all of the guns, locked it up and went inside. Once inside he began making sure the house was clear. As he went from room to room it became clear that the house was empty now, so he tore apart as much furniture as he could as quickly as he could, and used the pieces to brace the doors. After several minutes of searching, he found some nails in a coffee can on the back porch and barricaded all the windows shut on the first floor. After a moment of looking at his handiwork he decided it was as sturdy as could be expected, so he blew out the candle and lay down to sleep. Leon fell into a light sleep, and a few times in the night he awoke to the sound of banging, hissing, or flies buzzing. It was all in his nightmares though; the house was as silent as a grave. He fell fully asleep at long last and had the worst nightmare he had ever had since his childhood...

In the morning Leon woke up to a bright light. The sun was shining through the boards and in his eyes. Then he heard a very welcome sound... an engine, and it kept getting closer until he could even tell what it was; a city bus. He didn't even want to begin imagining a mob of people coming into his newly established safe haven and causing problems, but at least they weren't those things that he had encountered the day before. The engine slowed and finally stopped in front of the house. He peered out the window, between the boards, in time to see the bus stopped in the yard. One man got off and walked towards the house with his gun at the ready. He was a fairly burly man with a full beard and a bandanna tied around his head. He had both arms heavily tattooed and wore a black leather vest. Leon decided not to open the door just yet, for fear the newcomer would put a bullet between his eyes as soon as he poked his head out. The burly man climbed the steps slowly and came to the door and knocked. Leon hesitated a moment before shouting "What do you need?", The burly man's voice was rough and deep. "We need a safe place to stay. We have women, children, and injured... Don't worry, the injured haven't been bit, they were hurt in a car crash." Leon opened the door and told him to gather everyone up and come on in, and the burly man didn't hesitate to oblige. Within minutes there were several people in the living room of the small farm house. The larger man's name was James Dockland, there was an elderly goat wearing a Grey Hound uniform who introduced himself as Robert Hart. There were two children who were brothers, their parents had been killed in the car crash, and their names were Harry and Josh Kearney. They both had grievous, but nonfatal wounds. There was a pregnant mouse who was still in her nightgown, and she introduced herself as Linda Woodberry, and lastly was a young fox of about 21 years of age who introduced himself as Keith White.

Within minutes they were all standing in a small circle in the living room. Leon introduced himself to them and told them what he had been through, and they were impressed by the fact that he was still alive. They now had to decide on what to do. James, Robert, and Keith all agreed that they would be better off to stay in the house and try to fortify it as much as possible, but Linda thought they should leave and get as far from the town as possible. She finally decided to stay, because she would end up leaving alone.

Keith searched the house, but didn't find any useful weapons so Leon gave him the AK-47 and gave Robert the shotgun, keeping the .357 for himself. At least they were now mostly armed. "Well, if nobody has any objections I think we should just try to sit this out, because I can't think of any place we could go." Said Leon. "Well, beggin' yer pardon... uh... Leon, we should probably try to get some more ammo and weapons because the ammo we got won't last long if we get swarmed by those things out there." Said James. Leon thought for a minute and finally agreed. "I'm not gonna go into town alone, though, someone's gonna have to go with me. Any volunteers?" James volunteered immediately. Leon looked at Ken and he shrank as he looked at him. That was body language for "not me". "What about you, Robert?", "Not me, son, I'm far too old to go about fightin' wars and all that. Sorry." Leon finally pointed at Linda and the injured boys and said, "well if y'all'r gonna stay behind then watch after them. Make sure nothin' happens to 'em. Let's go Jim." "Don't call me Jim."

-TO BE CONTINUED-