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Regrettable Circumstances

Episode 4, Part 1

While Leon and Keith were still sleeping in Kansas City, about 800 miles away perhaps, Becky opened her eyes and sat up. She still wasn't used to the fact that she was living in the Sheriff's Department building. After rubbing her sore eyes after another sleepless night, the mother of Leon Matthew Bennett got out of her sleeping bag and got up from the floor with the assistance of a desk. There was barely any light coming in the window, she didn't know whether it was due to the time of day (she had no idea what time it was) or bad weather, and to be entirely honest she didn't care either. In the lobby of the Sheriff's Office, there were two covered forms still laying on the floor, one of them beginning to stink after dying in the night several nights ago from what may have been a heart attack, the other snoring softly, having not suffered the fate of the first. Becky had a feeling of impending doom despite the fact that there had been no sign of the rancid creatures outside for the last couple of days. Becky wasn't hungry, but decided to go into what used to be somewhat of a break room, but had been converted into almost a full-blown kitchen. There she bumped shoulders with "Butch", just as she entered the room. Not for the first time she was stricken by his size, once again musing to herself that he reminded her of a character from a particularly testosterone pumped, violent cartoon. She apologized for being so rude as to bump into him, and he grunted to her, "It's fine." before he sat down at one of the tables. William "Butch" Dearmon (Pronounced Day-Armun) a.k.a. "Bill the Butcher" was a six foot, five inch tall Bulldog, and he weighed more than three hundred pounds. A belt of .50 caliber bullets hung around his barrel sized chest, and a huge cigar that was even bigger than a .50 cal. hung lit from his mouth and made unpleasant smells. Bill the Butcher was a U.S. Marine Corps Sargent who had earned several major medals, including a purple heart, and participated in two wars. Butch dwarfed the chair, table, and plate full of unrecognizable jail food he was preparing to eat as if it were a child's play-set. Becky decided not to eat yet after-all and sat across from him. As Butch was chewing his second bite, Becky asked, "Do you think they're really all gone?" Butch's chewing slowed and his ears lowered thoughtfully. Finally, he said, "Too early to tell, Beck." and took another bite. "What'll we do if they aren't?" Becky asked before he was done with that bite. "What'll we do if they are, for that matter?" Butch answered her question with another question, his way of saying 'I don't know,' since Marine Corps officers didn't accept 'I don't know' for an answer... though not questions either... Butch continued before Becky could reply. "Society is already gone, as I'm sure you figured..." He takes another bite and chews slowly, searching for his next words. "We'll be comfortable for awhile, but sooner or later, without manufacturers, restaurants... and farmers too, we're on our own after ready supplies run out." Butch wasn't dumb, like most large, burly individuals are stereotyped to be. He didn't have a college education, but you would think that he did just from talking to him. "But if they are still out there, what will we do?" Becky asked, more anxiously than before. "Whatever we have to, Beck, whatever we have to." He said with great finality in his booming bass.

In a room across the hall from where Butch was eating "breakfast" (jailhouse slop), two men sat on the edge of a desk. The room was set up to be an office, but it had been re-arranged to accommodate room for sleeping bags; all the furniture including the desk the two men were sitting on had been jammed against the wall. The were fairly burly as well, but nowhere near as big as Butch. They both sported greasy baseball caps, long hair, scraggly, unkempt beards, and crooked yellow teeth. One wore a black and blue plaid flannel jacket, the other wore a sleeveless black shirt with "Iron Maiden" Printed across the front, along with our favorite bald evil looking creature named Eddy. The one with the Iron Maiden shirt was named Chris. He spoke first. "Greg, we got any o' them, uh, good foods left? Or just them dayum jail dinners?" He had a very heavy Southern accent. "Well, Butch dun ate that last burrito from the icebox yester-dee." Chris rubbed his face and said, "Aw sheeyit... I ain't eatin' that shit 'til I'm damn near starvin'!" Chris's hand slid down his cheek from his forehead and to his chin. He scratched it, then ran his fingers through his beard, which was dark brown and easily six inches long. "Well, Greg, ain't been none o' them booger-men (he meant boogeymen) a walkin' them streets the last couple o' days now. Maybe all this end-o'-the-world shit's over an' done. Whadda yew think?" "I donno, man. I'm a-hopin' them days is over, but somethin' ain't quite right (he pronounced 'right' like 'rat'), ain't no birds in the sky, ain't none o' them squirrels a-runnin' up them trees, I think it ain't over, ain't gonna be neither." Chris didn't like what he heard, looked down at his other hand which sat on his lap, and after a couple of seconds, he said, "Sheeyit..." After that, Chris and Greg, the two locally infamous cousins of Leon Matthew Bennett, sat in silence.

In the lobby where Becky woke up only ten minutes earlier, Jack opened his eyes. His nose was immediately assaulted by the stench of decay coming from the dead man. He held his breath for a moment, but decided he couldn't do that forever so he let it out and drew another, fighting back his rising bile. He sat up, then got out from his covers as quickly as he could, and walked quickly out of the room, promising himself he wouldn't sleep in that room another night. Poor guy, he thought, at least he doesn't have to deal with this hell that's plaguing us here. He realized that they had another month's worth of food, the jail dinners which required no refrigeration. If you can call that food, that is, he thought. When he recovered from his nausea, he entered the makeshift kitchen, wanting coffee but realizing there was none left, hadn't been any for the last two weeks. He walked by Butch and Becky, who sat chatting. "Mornin' Jack-Rabbit." Said Becky, making Jack grimace. Jack was a rabbit, but he wasn't a Jack_rabbit, and he hated being called that. "Morning, you two." He said politely and picked a table across the room to sit at, not hungry, just wanting to sit in a less nauseating environment. Jack didn't think the "booger-men", as Chris and Greg called them, would just disappear. No, it couldn't possibly be that easy. They had been in the Sheriff's Office since the outbreak began, and none of them knew anything about the "booger-men" except that they were very dangerous, and leaving the building could mean certain death, though staying in the building _would mean certain death sooner or later. Over the last... perhaps it's been a month and a week? It has gotten progressively worse. First, the generator ran out of gas. Luckily they had for-seen this and gotten two months' worth of water (if used carefully) before the water pump lost power. Then, all of the decently nutritious food ran out. Waste was piling up in the storage room which had been made into a makeshift latrine, and disease may soon follow. And on top of all that, Jack suspected that the rioters... NO, they aren't rioters. Jack doesn't know what they are, but they aren't human nor beast. Not anymore. Something is very wrong with them. But that is neither here nor there. Jack suspected the "booger-men" weren't really gone, but hiding, waiting, watching. They would ambush anyone who left the building and eat them. Yes, curious, I watched them eat that man... thought Jack almost speculatively. Something wasn't right, and it was high time to get the hell out of Dodge. Jack sat back and blinked helplessly at this thought. How were they to get out? He knew they had to, but HOW!? It was maddening! Jack sighed and slumped onto the table face-down, resting his forehead on his arm. He is exhausted after another night of fitful bouts of sleep, periodically waking from a nightmare and smelling that smell, that_awful smell!_ Jack was perhaps the most intelligent of the group, but he was far too exhausted to be able to answer that question. Before much longer, he fell into a restless sleep.

"Well, we can't stay here much longer, in a few more weeks we'll be out of food, water, and time. Becky said. "While those... people, no, not people, while those things might be lurking around out there, we just need to be careful. I'm not saying we should stay here, good God no!" said Butch. Just about the time Butch finished that sentence, the Samson boys made their usual loud, obnoxious, and almost rude entry. "Mornin' y'all." said Greg loudly with a shit-eating grin, exposing his not-so-pretty stained and crooked teeth. Chris waltzed in after him, also without grace. Becky regarded them with a loving yet peeved expression, while Butch looked at them with friendly contempt. Becky didn't know what to think of her hell raising nephews, whom she had known all of their lives, and so it came as no surprise that butch didn't either. "Mornin' yourself..." grumbled Butch in a voice that could have been distant thunder. Butch didn't dislike them, but sometimes they annoyed him or even flat out irritated the hell out of him. They took their seats at the table on either side of Becky, one on one side and one on the other. "What brings 'y'all' out here so early?" Becky asked mockingly and smiling sweetly the whole time. "Well, we was a-thinkin' in our little heads, whut if we was to just git? I mean tuh say, git outta here an' keep on a-goin'?" Asked Greg. "What could happen is we could find that those things are all gone and it's safe out there, or we could just be walking into a death trap and be killed." Butch said matter-of-factly. "Whut does that dude think?" asked Chris, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at Jack. "I don't know... he hasn't said more than 'hi' or 'bye' to me the whole month or so we've been in here." said Butch, sounding tired all of a sudden. "Hey Jerry!" Said Greg, almost shouting as he got up. "Jerry! Jim! Joe! Jack! Whatever the hell your name is! Wake up!" Greg reached the table, shook Jack by the shoulder, waking him up and scaring hell out of him at the same time.

Jack was sitting at the table trying to think of a way out of the station, safely, then all of a sudden everything looked entirely different. He lifted his head from the table and looked around the room. The room that had been their kitchen for the last month, week, two days, and seven hours was now much bigger than he remembered it being. He stood up and went to the cupboard to get coffee, but when he opened the cupboard there was no coffee. Instead of coffee was something that should have frightened him, but strangely it didn't. From the shelf inside, Butch's lifeless, mutilated, and disembodied head stared at him with empty, bleeding eye-sockets. A maggot squirmed out of his mouth and splatted on the floor. No, nothing strange there, thought Jack dreamily as he closed the cupboard door. He left the room and found himself in the hallway. It was no longer a mere thirty feet long, now it stretched so far, it seemed infinite, disappearing into a disconcerting darkness that could conceal countless horrors behind the comprehension of the darkest imagination. He turned to look through the glass into the office where the Samson boys slept normally. He saw something that should haunt him forever, but it wouldn't. Greg hung from the ceiling, moving around though he should be dead. He stared at Jack with black, empty holes where his eyes should have been, and he pointed at Jack with a bloody, skeletal hand while Chris ate his dangling intestines. Jack couldn't see Chris's face, but he knew he had no eyes. He didn't need eyes anymore; he was one of them. The walkers of the night. Nothing wrong with that, he loves him so much he could just eat him alive! Thought Jack, succumbing to the madness of this dark spin on reality. He continued walking down the corridor of eternity for hours, days, weeks, maybe even years. The darkness kept getting closer, but kept evading Jack at the same time. Jack dreaded deeply in his heart going into the darkness, but his legs continued walking perpetually forward of their own volition. Finally he came to a door on the wall, dark eternity stretching on further past it. He had no business there yet, though, so he went through the door instead of continuing down the hall. He came face to face with Becky, who had no eyes either, and instead of her soft, gentle smile, had an un-naturally wide (ear to ear, literally, in fact) harlequin's grin that dripped blood. "I've been waiting for you to join us, Jacky-Rabbit, we all have. You're dead already, and have no eyes. You just don't know it yet!!!" And she broke into gales of laughter that made Jack's head feel like worms crawled through his brain. The dead man on the floor joined her in the maddening laughter. Jack backed out of the room and shut the door, making it disappear by tapping on the knob. He continued down the hall of eternity. Then, from the darkness, came a monster that defied being seen. Its grotesque face shimmered in and out of focus, but Jack finally made out its features. It was his size, and humanoid shaped, but its jaws were filled with two inch teeth with needle sharp points that prevented its mouth from closing, and huge bloody claws on its hands, and it saw him with its non-eyes. Then, black water came from its empty eyes and mouth in a waterfall. The water was not water at all, though. Water is the giver of life, this was the giver of death. The monster flailed its head around then, faster than possible, and it screamed in a shrieking banshee voice, "HEY JERRY!!" It gurgled a few times, "JJJEEEERRRRRYYYY!!!! JJIIIIIMMMM!!!! JJOOOEEE!!!! JJAAACK!!! WHATEVER THE HELL YOUR NAME IS!!" Then, as it took his shoulder and shook him with un-natural strength, he could smell the smell of death coming from the water it spewed on him, it smelled like decay, disease, sewage, and smoke all at once, and it shrieked in a voice louder than the loudest sound ever heard before, "_ WAKE UP!!!! WAKE UP!!!! WA- _"

ke up!" Jack heard Greg saying, but had no idea for sure it was Greg. Jack opened his mouth and screamed louder than he ever has before, startling everyone in the room and making Greg take a startled step back. His scream finally turned into "NOOOOO!! Oh my God!" He looked around the room, first at Butch and Becky, Butch was already staring at him, stunned momentarily, and Becky and Chris turned around to look at him only a second after he looked, then he looked up into Greg's pleasantly normal face, no missing eyes, no blood, and no evil harlequin's grin. He breathed hard, covered his face, and half collapsed onto the table again, gasping for air for several seconds. Before many seconds passed, he said quietly and muffled through his arm, "We have to get out of here or we're all going to die..." The room was silent for the rest of the day after he said that.

The beginning of the next day was much like the one before, and a lot of the ones before that one too for that matter. Becky hadn't slept all that night, Jack slept fitfully, more fitfully that usual in fact, his sleep plagued by nightmares, some worse than the one Greg woke him from the day before. That night, though, not even the Samson brothers nor Butch could sleep. Jack's words bothered them all, and how he said them bothered Butch tremendously. He had heard that tone before. It was the tone of instinct. Some of the people he had served with had spoken in that tone from time to time, and when that tone was involved they were never wrong. Now butch sat at the table smoking the last of yesterday's cigar, realizing he had only one left after this one. The room filled with all the station's residents within the next hour, first Becky, then the tired looking, unusually un-energetic and, oh my Lord!Non-irritating Samson brothers entered quietly for the first time in recorded history (Becky was amazed). Then, at long last, a gaunt, exhausted, and terminally-ill looking Jack entered. Today, Jack sat with the rest of them, yet another first in recorded history, wow, today was full of surprised wasn't it? No one said anything for a long several minutes after Jack sat down, but Butch finally spoke out of dire necessity. "I think we should wait for three more days, just to be sure it's safe. If we don't see any movement after that we can inspect the town and make sure it's safe." Jack looked grim. "I think we need to get out of here... today. I don't mean to be disagreeable, Butch, but I can almost smell impending doom in the air. Something is wrong. Has been wrong for the last two months, even before Hell burst its gates upon the Earth, and it's even more wrong now... as...we...speak." Jack said the last three words with great emphasis, pounding his fist no harder than necessary on the table as he said each of them. The Samson brothers looked at him dumbly for a second, then at eachother, their brains gathering momentum like an old time (and very obsolete) steam train. "He's right, Butch." said Chris finally, even his accent lacked strength, it sounded thin and fragile. "There be a force a-gatherin' yonder in them hills somewhere." Greg broke in uninvited and said, "Chris, whut if that there 'force' yer a-talkin' on is right out them doors?" He said, his face pale and eyes hooded. "Then... I'm a-guessin' we's fucked is whut we is." Chris said gloomily, though he said it as though he no longer cared. "Ayunt Becca?" asked Chris. "Yes, Christopher?" "Whutchoo think o' this perdickymint we's in up in here?" "I think Butch's right, if nothing moves within three days it should be safe outside." She was speaking to Chris, but she locked eyes with Jack. He made no sign of either agreement nor disagreement at what she said. Jack did not protest when the other four finally unanimously agreed to wait three days, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that they would be dead before the sun rose the next day.

Time passed, as it always inevitably does. Minutes, oh excruciating minutes turned into hours, and hours that seemed like an eternity dragged painfully into days. It was on the second day that Becky was to be reunited with her son, Leon Matthew Bennett. Butch was sitting in the Lobby after finally shoving poor old George out the window. Born in 1949, died (God rest his gentle soul) 2011, trapped in a sheriff's station, his last meal having been jail slop, and his last thought being most likely something about someone he would never see again, something he would never do again, or something he would miss after he passed away. Now he lay on the grass outside the window, his shirt pulled gracelessly over his head, his pants askew, one shoe on, and his last night's sleep's covers heaped around him in an untidy wad, like a shroud in a dis-respected grave. What a world we live in, no time to respect dead old men... no time like the present, thought Butch somberly, almost bitterly, as he looked out the window, past the .50 caliber machine gun that sat just outside the door like a steel sentry. Then he saw something he had not seen for the last month and two weeks; a car on the street. A large, fairly elderly Ford pick-up lumbering towards the sheriff's station. He grabbed an object by the pistol grip, opened the door, held it out, and without aiming he pulled the trigger...

Leon looked around as he entered his home town, unchanged for the most part since he last saw it, save, perhaps, for the putrefied corpses, broken glass, wrecked cars, and a few burned skeletons that used to be buildings. "So, this is the town you grew up in?" Keith asked from the passenger seat. "Yep. Chattanooga... good ol' Chattanooga." He drove through lifeless streets, the cheerful sunshine oddly making the death and destruction seem more sinister than it already was. "Do you think they really are all gone?" Leon looked at Keith. "Whut?" his Southern accent, before fairly vague and easy to miss, seems to have grown much more noticeable since they entered his home town. "The creeps. Think they're really all gone?" "I dunno. Could be. I ain't seen 'em around for the last three, four days" "Maybe it's over." "I hope so, Keith, God help me, I hope so." Leon finally reached his childhood home. With sentimental tears in his eyes, he regarded the broken windows, crooked door, wrecked cars on the lawn, and the burned and dead Maple tree he remembered so well, with heartbreak. The tree hurt the most, as a child he had spent countless hours in its shade, and enjoyed the syrup his mother made from its sap many times through the two decades he had lived in this house. He had known his mother wouldn't be there, or wouldn't be alive if she were. When he searched the house, he found no signs of a struggle and no dead mother, so at least she might still be alive. Then, something caught his eye outside. He ran out with Keith at his heels, and saw an 80's-ish Ford Bronco with Sheriff's Department insignia on the doors. A hastily made sign that was being posted when the officer was killed proclaimed under smears of blood, 'EVACUATION CENTER AT SHERIFF'S STATION, 13447 LARK WAY'. Leon jumped in the truck, Keith too, and he floored it all the way to the station with hope swelling in his chest. As he saw the shambles of the sheriff's station, his heart sank, though. More bodies, more death, more destruction. Nothing moved, and broken glass littered the street. Just as he began slowing and preparing to turn around, go North after-all, he was surprised by a loud report that came from the sheriff's department, and a flare fired into the sky...

_ TO BE CONTINUED... _