The television hums with a single high toned note and dull red flashes from the digital clock in the next room bounce off the curved glass of the screen. The tone cuts out abruptly and the speakers fill with hissing static. It becomes entirely lost to the world, cosmic background radiation its only connection now. The sounds left over from the big bang course inaudibly over the last instances of mankind and the small starship that they call Earth. In the expanse of the universe this heavenly body and its life can appear so pitiful and insignificant. Yet, the planet is massive to the fleshy, conscious and intelligent creatures that walk its surface. Layne dreams in a superficial monologue with his eyes slitted, his thoughts rising quickly from dream and catching on to stimulation from outside his head.

His dream is lost beyond memory as consciousness reasserts itself. He feels his head begin to swim violently with the previous night’s binge and it sets his stomach reeling. He grips the edge of the bed and waits for the slow spinning sensation to subside. Gingerly he untangles his legs from the sweaty bed sheets and lets them pool at the foot of the bed.

He sits up slowly and cradles his head between his hands. A sudden jolt of pain runs from the calf of one leg to his brain and he falls over onto his side rolling into the fetal position. He kneads sorrowfully at the oxygen starved muscle until it relaxes and the pain dissipates. He lies still for a few moments, hoping that the tenacious grasp of sleep will return but his full bladder robs him of this reprieve.

He stands and his greasy palms stick to the latex paint on the wall as he regains balance. He walks slowly over the carpet while pinching jagged goobers from the corners of his eyes. The light from the bathroom window is dazzling and he closes his eyes against the assault as he steps up to the toilet. He blinks slowly and flushes the toilet.

“You look like you’re dead.” He says to himself, looking into the bathroom mirror. Then he answers himself.”I guess if you’re going to tie one on you may as well do it right.”

He gazes at his reflection, bloodshot eyes and sleep permed hair standing out at all angles. Cold water runs from the tap and he rinses his eyes and face and smooths down his hair. He rinses his mouth for a few seconds and spits into the sink. He opens the medicine cabinet door and dumps two aspirin into his palm before pushing them between his lips and chewing on them. The pills crunch jarringly between his teeth and he relishes the bitter taste. Cupping his hands below the faucet he drinks deeply from the cool bubbling water.

Breathing deeply through his nose he realizes how stale the air in the little bathroom is. Reaching over, he unseats the window lock and slides it open. He presses his face to the mesh of the screen breathing deeply again. Instead of the exhilarating breeze he had been expecting his lungs fill with the acrid stenches of burning rubber and rotting garbage. Drawing back coughing and spitting he draws the window closed quickly and resists the slimy tingle at the back of his throat has his mouth begins to water.

Hesitant to open the window again he attempts to make out any discernible shapes beyond the marbled privacy glass. But even if he could have seen outside, he realized, the neighbor’s house would take up the majority of the view from outside the window.

Shaking his head slightly from side to side he walks out of the bathroom and to the kitchen on the other side of the house. Grimacing at the haze of swarming flies and the sink crammed full of dirty dishes he turns to the living room instead. A sliver of light cuts its way through the obscuring gloom of the living room. The horizontal blinds in the picture window were drawn and heavy curtains suppressed any significant amount of light that flowed from the world outside.

He sat on the edge of the plush green recliner and pulled the television remote control from where it had become wedged between the cushion and arm rest. He fingered the power button for the cable box but noticed it had already been on. He switched it back on and tried direct channel numbers before giving up and rapidly pressing the up channel key. The channels scrolled by quickly as he plundered the function like a veteran of the analog era. Every channel number brought the same monochromatic swarm of seemingly minuscule bees as they crawled over the screen. He turned the television itself off and dropped the remote control to the floor.

A low thrumming first vibrated the air and then the house, making the glasses in the kitchen cupboard rattle. The sound, he realized, was the steady whoop-whoop of helicopter rotor blades as they bit into the air for lift. He stumbled through the living room and back into the kitchen. Swatting at the buzzing flies over the sink he touched his nose to the window and watched as a dozen or more military looking helicopters crossed the sky and flew on into the horizon. The roar of the choppers dulled and grew fainter as the last passed over the tree-line and was lost from sight.

He pulled the window open with numb fingers and held his breath against the expected assault of noxious fumes. Slowly his mind churned as his eyes communicated what he was seeing with the deeper comprehensible parts of his brain. Reality seemed to shimmer for an instant, a mirage on the boundary of sleep and wakefulness. He pictured the statue of liberty losing its copper to weather and rain, a pound a year. Lady liberties’ skin sloughs off first green, then copper then skeleton, and finally human bones. He saw human bones?

He slid the window shut under flattened palms and stammered backwards into the refrigerator. The sound of the retreating helicopters had become faint before he had opened the window, suddenly springing back up in volume once it was open. There had been something below that noise that he hadn’t caught until he had opened the window. Now it swelled into an underlying thrum. Lost to his mind again for an instant, he pictured a stadium or sports arena. It was full to capacity with cheering fans, first drunk with competition and then drowning into stupidity. They were all calling out in a babble of confused but wholehearted fervor, the thunder of those thousands of voices rising in a tremor and vibrating the air.

Layne cocked an eye at the edge of his neighbor’s house through the kitchen window, his gaze catching on a new dull maroon stain on the wall’s white facade.

“Ah what the hell is this?” Layne asks himself.

The sound from outside cut through the walls of his house as if they were made of paper or tent fabric instead of sheet-rock and plywood. It was a dizzying experience. Once the sound had registered it had been all he could hear even above the beating of his own heart.

His stomach tensed with a cramp and he retreated to the living room. Cautiously pulling back the curtains and kneeling on the love seat he parted the blinds a crack with the fingers of one hand. He felt as if the wind were knocked right out of him. Breath was stifled deep where he couldn’t catch it, his chest hitched and he vomited down his chest and onto the back of the love seat. He watched frozen with terror while stomach acid and aspirin chunks ran warmly down to the waistband of his boxers and collected.

A very frail, very sick looking old woman shambled up the sidewalk in front of the house and onto the lawn. The tattered remnants of a gray sweat suit drooped from her frame. A flap of shriveled skin jutted from beneath one shadowed eye and her bare left breast revealed itself through a tear in her shirt. The thighs of her pants were stained maroon and brown, crusted thickly behind with a cake of shit. She uttered a low moan, inaudible through the glass and a streamer of saliva from her chin caught on the wind and looped delicately through air before touching the areola of her exposed breast and breaking loose.

Layne pressed a palm to his mouth and watched in helpless dread and dismay as the old woman reached down to what looked to be a young boy lying on the grass. A mongrel of a dog had its snout buried deep in the boy’s chest cavity. It stopped its chewing once it took notice of the woman. She began to kneel stiffly down to the boy’s purple and yellowing body. He watched as the dog lurched violently at the reaching hand and latched on. The woman stumbled forward and canted slowly before spilling completely forward on top of the sprawled corpse. The dog shook its head ferociously from side to side throwing a curtain of blood clotted saliva and a chunk of ripped flesh from its muzzle. He continued to watch as the chunk of flesh rose into the air and fell to the grass, tumbling towards the house. Two fingers flipped and flopped loosely as the chunk skittered over the grass.

He felt his gorge rising quickly again and pushed away from the window as the old woman rolled over onto her back and sat up. Her sunken gaze had fallen to the front of the house and the picture window set in it. The eyes had found the fingers and the part in the blinds. Layne realized for the first time where the saying ‘scared to death’ had come from. He subconsciously reached out to the coffee table and picked up the smoky gray ashtray, fingering through the litter of butts in search of a half smoked cigarette. All he wanted was a deep drag of smoke from the remains of a cancer stick long enough to cool his frayed nerves.

Something slammed into the side of the house in the space between the picture window and the front door. He jerked and spilled the butts onto the floor. A framed photo of a night forest scene jarred loose and slid down the wall onto the floor. He stood in dumb awe as the doorknob began to turn. He hurtled the coffee table and rammed his shoulder into the door as it came open. The door clapped back into its frame and he twisted the deadbolt before the doorknob could make another full turn. At the ‘thock’ sound of the bolt seating itself the doorknob settled and a hectic pounding started rattling the door. Sunlight flickered between the door and its frame under the assault. He was shocked to find himself doubting that the barricade would hold.

Layne swallowed thickly and closed his left eye angling his face at the peephole. The door shuddered again and he peered through the small eyesight. The old woman was thrashing just inches from where he stood. He could smell her through the door. Her skin was yellowed, jaundice looking, her eyes were sunken deep into their sockets and the whites had turned an unnerving shade of brown. Those eyes rolled around seeming to search but at the same time not making any actual recognition of anything that came into her vision. She hammered on the door once more wither her forearms and stopped abruptly. He could hear the cracking of bones, like thick dry sticks breaking and she fell out of view. She tumbled down the two cement stairs outside the door and onto the walkway that parted the front lawn.

He slowly tracked the whole area outside with his one eye. He counted nearly half a dozen people shambling across the lawn towards his house and behind them dozens more coming from the street. He nearly collapsed to the floor as he caught sight of the dog again. It had finished with its meal and was staring directly at the door, at him. It let out a hoarse growl that Layne could hear even through the door and bounded across the grass.

“Oh shit!” Layne said, jumping back.

First fists began pounding on the door followed by the distinct sound of claws cutting across the surface of the wood. The picture window burst inward, large scythe shaped chunks of glass flipping through the blinds. A body fell through the horizontal blinds and caught for a moment before the mounts broke free and it flopped over the love seat and onto the floor.

He heard another window shatter, this time from the kitchen. Looking over he saw the small portal above the sink crowd with grasping arms. The curtains over the picture window tore free from the wall and Layne got his first really good look at the horde that was piling up inside the window frame. Standing in denial, trying to believe his eyes he tried to tell himself that he was still asleep. Surly this must be a very bad dream. He swore to God or any other power in reality that he would give up the drinking and smoking if he were allowed to wake up right now. But he knew that no dreams have ever been this terrible.

The dog barked from behind the bodies piling up in the living room window. He could see it snapping its way through the crowd. It was using its teeth and claws to climb up the pile of compressed bodies and flailing limbs. His mind bogged down in fear and he was struck motionless. He tried to move but his brain wouldn’t or couldn’t send the signals necessary down to his legs, he felt detached as if he were having an out of body experience. His hands drew themselves quickly to the sides of his head. He saw a white flash and the right side of his head began to throb with fresh pain. He looked down to see blood pattering on his shoulder and the ashtray still clutched in his hand. Briefly he tried to recall when he had picked it but that train of thought quickly derailed.

Layne moved, tumbling over the recliner and scrambling to his feet. He crossed the threshold and into the kitchen, ducking away from the arms the continued to reach through the window over the sink. He pounded through the laundry room and threw open the door to the back of the house.

An otherworldly roar ripped at his eardrums making him cringe and squirm. In his mind he could see the dog snaking its way through the house and plunging down on him and sinking its teeth into the vulnerable flesh at the nape of his neck. He slammed the door shut so violently that it almost bounced back open. He knew that this was the point in nightmares that the door would suddenly be two sizes too small to fit the frame, or the wall would crack and the door would fall in on itself. He heard the dog slide through the kitchen and into the laundry room. It struck the door running headlong and he heard it fall back to the floor. He had imagined that the dog was right behind him but hadn’t realized just how close it had been.

The dog scratched and dug at the linoleum on the other side of the door. He stood on the back stairs shoeless, covered in his own vomit and blood. He almost laughed in hysteria when he realized he was still holding the ashtray in one shaking hand. Ashes puffed and sifted from the bowl of the ashtray with every movement he made.

That’s a goddamn good luck charm, he thought to himself. Layne looked up to see smoke billowing into the sky over the ugly mint green duplex that bordered the back of his property. The sounds of chaos and destruction echoed through the air in a lilting dance, the audible version of a boat rocking on the sea. The tremor and thrum of his house being torn apart behind him almost sent Layne running again. But where would he go? Could he get past whatever is left in the front yard and safely to the car

He coughed at the acrid tinge in the air and mentally sent out one last halfhearted prayer to the god or whichever divine essence had shown him mercy last time. He reached down with his free hand to feel his pants pockets for the car keys that would surely be there. They were not. The keys could still be in the house somewhere but he had a faint memory from the night before of dropping them on the floorboard of the car while attempting to juggle two cases of beer.

He refused to resign himself to death and despair. The mounting commotion coming from behind the door sealed the deal. Layne stopped thinking and moved.

Stepping carefully down onto the grass he angled against the house and walked quickly to the corner. He looked around the corner as glass shattered over one shoulder. He turned his head in time to have his lips smashed against his teeth as the window screen whipped down carried by a limp body. He jumped back and ran down the side of the house as bodies began cascading from the broken window.

The car was sitting in the clear for the moment and what remained of the swaggering bodies in the street were making their way towards the house from the left and right simultaneously. The car was only twenty feet away but in his abstracted terror it looked like twenty miles. The people were closing in rapidly, not quite running but not walking either. They appeared to flow as a single body down the open passage afforded by the street.

A silhouette of skeletal remains stepped in front of Layne and stopped. Plasma and mucus fluttering in and out of its exposed nasal cavity as it sniffed the air. It turned its head and leveled its gaze at Layne, the only flesh left on its head were the small patches covering its eye sockets. The thing almost looked as if it was covered in monster movie makeup but when it opened its mouth all sense of fabrication was dispelled. Its tongue pulled free from its shattered teeth and it chomped at the air. It stretched its arms and reached for Layne. He tightened his grip on the ashtray until his knuckles turned white and swung at the creature’s head. The ashtray bit into the palm of his hand is it connected. It stuck for a moment in the creature’s skull but popped free as its knees bent and it collapsed to the ground.

Layne bolted across the lawn, skidding flail-armed in the mass of gore streaked across the grass. His bare feet slid into the torso of the boy on the ground. Layne let out an ear piercing shriek as the boy’s gnarled stump of an arm slid down the inside of one of his legs. He looked down in yawning anxiety at the up close travesty at his feet. Globs of congealed blood stuck to the fabric of his jeans. The boy’s lower jaw was almost entirely gone what remained were two glistening knobs jockeying up and down in a grizzly seesaw motion. Layne jerked his foot back and the inertia of the movement sent him sprawling face first to the blood soaked lawn.

He scrambled almost comically across the body like a cartoon character that had been unfortunate enough to find itself standing on an oil slick or pond of ice. His feet finally found decent purchase and he slammed against the passenger side of the car. The door growled open crookedly and he fell inside. He pulled the door closed and pressed down on the electric door lock. He sat for a breath then reached out and pressed on the manual door locks for good measure.

He hopped up and slid over the center console pulling up his knees and wedging in below the steering wheel.

Dozens of hands slapped against the dusty windows. Layne reached below his seat in earnest, sweeping his hand across the carpet searching for the keys. He couldn’t find them and his heart plummeted, imagining dying of dehydration within the cramped confines of the car as the monsters relentlessly beat on the windows night and day. He swiveled his head around and reached further back, across the floorboard and under the seat.

He found them, thinking that they must have sloughed across the floorboard last night as he had reached in the back to retrieve his beer. He shook his head. None of that shit matter at all now. Dropping the ashtray into the passenger side seat he switched the keys to his right hand and loaded the ignition. He didn’t bother praying to that God or deity that had seemed to save him the last two times he was in need. Resisting the urge to pretend this was all a dream and to attempt to wake himself his head swum with fury. He wouldn’t succumb to the tired movie trope of the car not starting at the worst of possible moment. The very notion was infuriating and he twisted the key in a hot rage. The engine canted on its motor mounts and rumbled to life. Not realizing that he had been holding his breath, despite all the macho mental mentality, he really had been holding to it. He let out the breath in a bellowing sigh.

“Fuck it; I’d still really like to wake up right now.” Layne said. He shook his head and crooked half crazed grin split his lips.

He put pressure on the gear shift and popped the transmission into drive. The half crazed grin fell from his face and his hands went clammy as the car began to pull forward. An annoying tingle ran up and down his spine as the hand first fell away from the windshield and then the front windows. He could see hundreds, or maybe it was thousands, of people rampaging through his cul-de-sac. They slid over cars, toppled lawn ornaments and trashcans. They crashed up against mailboxes and the cul-de-sac’s two light and utility poles. All hell had literally blown loose and Layne had the sinking feeling that a great deal of this commotion was at his behest.

Driving slowly at first, for fear that he’d become high-centered on bodies, Layne steadily pressed down on the gas pedal until he reached five miles per hour. He wondered who these people were and exactly what the hell they wanted. But he knew, even at base consciousness he knew. They were zombies, the living dead, come to eat his brains. But no, that wasn’t quite right. If that dog back home was any indication then these people had come to devour every last morsel of soft tissue on his bones. Shit, seeing how many of them there were he guessed that they’d probably have ended up eating his bones as well. The half crazed grin rose again but this time it was grimmer than anything.

Then he caught sight of his neighbor from three doors down. His name was Jason. Layne thought to himself, good God they got Jason. If they could do that then it could happen to anyone. But he refused to let it happen to him. Jason drew nearer in the window, his face blotted and half smeared with blood. Dead people, real people, it sank in again much deeper this time. His grin deepened and furrowed his brow.

His bare foot pressed down further on the rubber of the gas pedal. The blood from the lawn had started to dry and began to flake off like an ancient coat of paint. He bowled down five of the zombies, one of them his neighbor Jason, but he didn’t even see the man as singular any longer. A hazy cloak of disbelief and unreality, shellshock maybe fell over Layne’s perceptions. The street was this with the undead and they were all coming directly for him.

“You bunch of fucking lemmings!” Layne shouted with spit flying from between his gritted teeth.

He steered the car off of the street and up onto the sidewalk where they weren’t standing shoulder to shoulder. The car gripped easily on dry lawns that skirted the sidewalk and the car picked up speed. A mailbox pinged off of the car’s bumper and shot up over the hood. It glanced off the windshield with a shriek and caved in the head of a zombie stumbling along beside the car.

The going was slow and frightening. A few ties he had lost traction as the wheels rolled over a femur or skull and the tire would spin maddeningly. A sharp crack would quickly follow and the car would settle a few inches back to the ground. As he careened through the mob time appeared distort and he felt as if he had been driving for days. The faces fell under and slipped by like stars falling past a starship.

Finally the group started to thin as he pulled out of the short street that connected his cookie cutter cul-de-sac to the main road. He weaved around the few lat shambling corpses and sped down the road. He looked into the rearview mirror as the mob flowed out onto the road. The scene behind began to shrink in the mirror and he put his blinker on out of habit and turned onto a county road.

The windshield wipers caught for a moment before sliding up into the muck obscuring his vision. After a few passes the passenger side wiper flopped off and the bare knuckle of the wiper arm scratched loudly across the glass. Blood and gore, was how he would describe it lamely later, smeared grudgingly and then was swept away with a generous spray of lubricating washer fluid. He let the driver’s side window down and fumbled through the glove box searching for a pack of cigarettes.

Layne pulled the pack and fumbled one to his lips. He had to start it burning with the car’s cigarette lighter. It seemed that his Zippo was one of the many casualties suffered this day. He breathed the smoke in and out of his lungs, feeling the sedative effect of the nicotine. Hot ashes fell from the burning cigarette to his lap and he fought to keep the car on the road as he patted them out. He braked the car to a stop and swiped his hand between his cheeks and the car seat, sending the stray cherry to the floorboard.

He stopped struggling as he noticed the sound of an aircraft engine cranking up and over. The sound rose in pitch and volume and he looked out of the open window. A small aircraft hangar he had never noticed before sat to the side of the road obscured by trees. The large flat field had been nondescript, blending in with the acres of farming and graze land. He realized it was an airstrip, perfectly flat and well maintained. He read the words ‘Cricket Aerodrome’ on a roadside fence as the plane pulled slowly out of the building. The sound of the engine picked rose several octaves and the plane made a left turn. It slowed as it lined up with the length of the field and with a wash of exhaust the engine flared. The small turboprop drove bumpily down the grassy tract. The plane was up in the air and turning around in less than a minute. Layne nodded to himself and waved a hand as it flew overhead and across an empty pasture.

“Good luck whoever you are.” He said to the passing plane.

He pressed down on the gas, reseated his cigarette with his teeth and rumbled down the road. Less than a quarter of a mile past the place where the plane had taken off he had to slow to pass a mob of corpses that had grouped around an abandoned car. He head music and it was loud, loud enough to cover the sound of his own approach. Very smart, he thought, that must have been a decoy.

He sped past the scene and began to subconsciously hum the words of tune that had been blaring from the car’s speakers.

“I’m just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control.” Layne sang briefly to himself.

He made a right turn, still using his blinker and continued humming the tune.

Layne didn’t see the arm trailing from his front bumper as it dislodged and tumbled to the asphalt. The dead limp landed on the centerline and came to a rest. He rounded one corner and then another trailing body parts.

He had no specific destination in mind, getting away had been the extent of his planning. Now that things had calmed down and the patina of unreality began to fall away he realized where he had been heading the whole time. There would be only one reason for him to be taking the route he was on. The read led inadvertently to Beakman’s Diner.

He didn’t spend any time wondering why he had chosen that destination. Besides home and the local bar Beakman’s is where he spent the majority of his time. He had worked there off and on for the last five years as a short order cook. The place was patronized by retired couples, truckers and the local good old boys. Most of these people were the types of people who carried guns in their underwear and had the attitude to use them. He was fairly certain that some of them would be there right now. Beakman’s was their forum. The customers came in at least three times a day, in the morning for their coffee and eggs, in the afternoon for grab-assing whichever waitress was on duty at the time (Beakman’s owner Donald Casper only ever hired girls for the floor) and at night for shot of moonshine in the parking lot and warm buffet beer in the bar. Bunch of crazy rednecks, he thought, if anyone can get a handle on this shit it will be them.

He drove for a little while longer. Out here in the sticks there didn’t seem to be so many of those… zombies, he’d stick to zombies.  No pussyfooting around the subject. Sure they’re walking dead, walkers. They bite, they smell bad and everything else you could imagine involving reanimated corpses out to devour your flesh. No beating around the bush, the situation was zombies pure and simple. Layne had just left the outskirts of a major population center and was on his way towards another. He stopped the car in the center of the road with expanses of empty field to either side. He scanned the area with bloodshot eyes and got out of the car. He stood next to the battered and bloody car smoking his cigarette.

Taking a moment to assess himself his stomach fluttered. Dried blood crusted the shoulder of one arm. Evaporated vomit clung to the whiskers on his chin and the sparse hair of his chest. He shook off a cringing tingle in his spine and got back in the car. Rolling down the road again his mind skirted along a very apparent line of shock. He would never quite grasp the situation he had been thrust into but later he would not repeat the several mistakes that stemmed from that feeling of unreality. He butted his cigarette in the now chipped ashtray.