Train of Sin

Red velvet chairs

Black curtains draping

Over long windows

Corpses sitting in chairs

Hands clinging to the red velvet

Staring out the windows

With their eyelids shut

Motion sickness

The tracks here are rough

Out the window the sun is bright

Children play, life goes on

It’s afternoon delight

The whistle blows

The outsiders look into our windows

Back away from our doors

Leaving the passengers alone forever more

They shout hellos

They shout goodbyes

They shout their sympathies

As the sitting corpses open their eyes

The corpses move their frozen hands

Cobwebs lift off in strands

They flow in the wind as the corpses wave

Wishing the world that’s passing them by a wonderful day

The corpses hold no ill will

As they watch what could have been leaning on the windowsill

They ride this train into the ground

For those not yet frozen to the seat

Those of us with a heartbeat

We got on the train with the ones we love

Helped them get cozy in their velvet seat

But we didn’t know as we turned our free ticket in

Our friends would stay away and pity those riding the train of sin

Those with heartbeats stand

“Get on this train!” They command

But those outside just continue on

Passing by, taking leisurely strolls on the lawn

The warm bodies march to the door

They plan to get off and start a war

The rage inside is so raw

They don’t see the hellhound conductor block the exit with his paw

“Get to your seat. The train is moving,” He growls.

“The innocent are ignorant, scared of things outside their life.”

“But don’t you worry. They will have strife.”

“I myself will take a knife,”

“And carve their ticket out of their flesh

in the same shape that matches the scar on your chest.”

Chapter Eight

I wake up in the back of the black SUV. Carl, Brian, and I laid down on the blankets Mom packed and we put the chairs down for bed around nine. Mom and Dad are sleeping in the reclining front seats. It’s still dark outside, and the stars are bright as I look out the back hatch window. This is the third time tonight I’ve woken up trying to sleep in this uncomfortable and packed arrangement. This time I can’t fall back asleep even when I bury my head in Brian’s arm. I have to pee. That annoying sensation in my bladder that just won’t go away.

I let out a small sigh, and I get up to try and find whatever makeshift restroom this parking lot camp has created. I quietly open the side door and slip out. Everyone in the camp appears to be sleeping. There are a few guards outside the food tent and the medical tent is the only one still aglow with a few lights run by humming generators. I walk towards the medical tent. It seems the logical place to put a restroom. I find a wall of porta-jons about 20 feet away at the edge of the parking lot. Not one person around the tent pays attention to me. They either stand in a trance-like state, half asleep or are talking in low whispers to one another.

When I come out I notice that there are no campers behind the medical tent on this side. As a matter of fact there are sandbag barriers every five feet so it is impossible to camp. I wander that way, naturally, with my curiosity peaked.

There are a few police cars and one Humvee in this area. There are two cops in one of the squad cars. Their eyes glint in the shadows through the large Crown Victoria windows as they talk to each other and keep watch. I move slow and low; I avoid their gazes by moving from barrier to barrier.

About 70 yards beyond the pathetic watch duty is a wall. A poorly constructed barrier, made out of broken pieces of concrete. Rusty wires poke out sporadically. It reaches to the hospital wall on either side, making a pen of sorts that is about 3,000 square feet around. I see that just beyond the pile wall is the top of a barbed wire fence on the other side. It must be at least 12 feet high.

I stop and stare at this eye sore in the moonlight. Then I hear it, shuffling and bumping. So very quiet but definitely coming from the other side of the wall. I climb over the wall pile. I slip once going up on the unsteady blocks. A few small bits roll to the bottom. There is a moan from the other side at the noise. I freeze.

After a few moments my heart beats normally again, and I finish my short climb. I peer over the edge and in the dim light of the night I see them just behind the barbed wire. Zombies, just roaming around, shuffling into one another. I hear a mechanical sound and a door that looks like brand new slides open on the side of the hospital. The grinding noise it makes attracts a few of the corpses. They make their way to the dark door. One makes it inside, and the door immediately shuts behind it. A few more zombies begin pawing on the door. After a few minutes of silence and stillness they forget what they are doing and continue mulling around their quaint parking lot courtyard.

“What the Hell?” I whisper to myself. This is dangerous. There are over a thousand people living in the same hospital complex. I don’t even think any of them are aware of this, and if they are then they are all insane to be comfortable sleeping so close to this weak barrier. The sound of my teeth grating each other hits my ears. I turn around to make sure no one is watching me. Then I see a sign in the night that my eyes hadn’t noticed on my way here posted on a sandbag barrier.

Warning. Area not yet secure. Radioactive corpses possible.

Possible? They are keeping them penned up like cattle! I shuffle down the rock pile, being extra careful not to scatter any rocks to the bottom this time. I’m not sure how secured that barbed fence is.

Once I am on the ground, I follow the fence connecting to the hospital. I come across a window. At first glance it seems dark, but I peer inside anyway. My eyes adjust and I see that just down the hall a door is cracked open and fluorescent light is streaming out onto the floor in a little sliver. I see footsteps walking under the doorframe. One set of feet runs past the door; I hear a faint gunshot, just barely audible through the window. Then the fluorescent glow turns black as blood pours under the doorframe.

Dad said they were doing research on the first floor of the hospital, but never would I have thought they were keeping so many zombies so close to the refugee area. We have to get out of here. All it would take is for one little kid to go on an adventure over here and startle all those corpses.

I back away from the window and make my way back to our campsite in the dark. There’s no need to wake anyone up tonight. It might cause the panic in the camp I want to avoid if we leave suddenly at only God knows o’clock, but first thing in the morning I’ll tell Dad to pack it up and get any supplies for Mom from the med tent before we take off. I open the backseat door and climb carefully over Carl into my own sleeping bag.

I roll over, realizing I forgot to pray the first time I dozed off. Which may explain why sleeping was so difficult.

“Dear God,” I suddenly feel very tired. “Please let that wall hold so we can hold on just a little longer.” I sigh. I am emotionally exhausted as well as physically. I have no more words for God tonight. “Let my mother one day live a cancer free life. Amen.” I roll over and fall asleep using my arm as a pillow.

I open my eyes as soon as the sun starts climbing the horizon. Only the sun isn’t what wakes me; there are screams coming from the far end of the parking lot, shrill and full of fear. Then there is a banging on Dad’s door. Everyone else in the vehicle starts awake at the sound. Dad opens his door with sleep in his bright green eyes.

“The area is being evacuated, sir,” says an officer.

“What? Why?” Dad asks.

“Security has been breached on the north end.” Where the fence is, I think.

“Zombies are in the parking lot?” Carl asks. As if on cue Brian, Carl, and I all reach for the guns that are laying at our feet.

“My orders are to get everyone out, not alert vigilantes and answer questions. They are going to do a sweep of the a…” The man in black stops talking. He looks behind us toward the start of the parking lot where we drove in yesterday. We all turn our heads.

There are about 100 zombies coming out of all nooks and crannies of apartments and store alleyways. As the first line of zombies sees their food, they howl. It is like a zombie choir of screeches in the crisp morning air. The camp is suddenly alive. People that were asleep just seconds ago begin grabbing what little possessions they have and waking up smaller children.

“We’re trapped,” I say.

The man in black splits, I see him run to the med tent with his gun raised.

“Trapped?” I hear Dad.

We can’t leave the car. Then I remember I am the only one who knows, “We can’t run back toward the hospital. Last night I found a horde.”

“Horde?” Says Carl. “How does someone just stumble upon a horde and nothing happens?”

“Shut up, Carl. Listen. Dad, you said they were researching in the hospital; well they are, on live undead zombies. There must be at least 200 of them near the hospital wall. I found them all penned up last night.”

“Shit,” says Dad. “You didn’t think to tell us, Zoe?” He is ticked.

“And do what Dad, run over everyone else’s campsite in the middle of the night?”

Mom hasn’t said a word; I look at her to see why she is so quiet. She is so pale today. Her eyes are so sunken and black it looks like she hasn’t slept a wink though I know that the Vicodin they gave her yesterday knocked her out cold.

Dad looks at Mom, too.

“Roll up the windows, and lay back down. Let’s pray to God this commotion keeps us covered,” Dad shouts.

We all follow Dad’s orders. Mom and Dad return to their reclined position and the three of us lay back down with a gun in each of our hands. I pass a shotgun slowly up to Dad. He slinks it into his lap. After about 30 seconds the screams have faded to the other side of the lot…by the hospital wall. Another 30 seconds pass and I see them. The zombies from the city have a target now; they shamble toward the living, people trying to gather their families and belongings in a rush after being woken up. I look up and out the window at what were once faces. Most of these zombies seem older than at least a week. Their flesh is shrunken from the heat of the summer, and the blood is almost black on any wounds they acquired in life.

I see my Calculus teacher, Mr. Seluski. His face turns with a limp he has from what must be a broken leg. I see that the entire left side of his face is scraped away, like someone took a cheese grater to his face. His always trim, white mustache hangs crooked now, barley dangling on to the skin above his lip. He turns towards our car and screams. The grated side of his face stretches out, and I can see his teeth through what is left of his cheek.

I squirm closer to Brian, letting his warmth calm me because it feels like my heart is stuck in my throat. He seems unshaken at everything happening; he is still and staring out the window like he is staring at a math problem. I look at Carl. He looks calm as well, but his hands are in a death grip on his gun.

I hear shots firing from behind us toward the zombie pen. I risk it and inch upward looking out the front window. No one makes a move to grab me, and I stay low. As my eyes barely skim over the dash I see the chaos unfold. Right in front of our SUV lies a child being eaten by a male zombie. The little boy’s eyes roll back into his skull as the zombie rips into his stomach. People, who are too panicked to wonder why the piles of stone are there, are climbing the fence only to join those people who have already made it to the top and now stand horror stricken. I see a woman near the edge of the top pushed over and onto the barbed wire fence by a crowd of five people behind her. Her body wobbles strangely, and then I realize the zombies below her are pushing on the wire mesh in a mass that is shaking the recently constructed fence loose.

“Dad, look!” I say. He inches up in his seat. “We need to go now, drive through these straggling zombies before that wall is overcome.”

“Lay back down,” he says. Then Dad does what he loves to do best, drive like a bat out of Hell. He pops his chair back up to a seated position, a zombie about 5 yards outside the driver’s window turns at the motion, but before he even takes a step toward us Dad has the engine on and the SUV in drive. He hits the gas and does a U-turn that has me clutching my chest as we lift onto two wheels. Carl falls on top of me and I fall on top of Brian. He picks up speed and goes, running over tents and bags, dodging other cars, and (most) of the zombies. Blood spatters the front windshield, and Dad turns on the wipers. I try to sit up a few times, and after being knocked back down three times I finally sit up and look out the back window. Brian and Carl sit up beside me.

The fence is down. In the growing distance I can see the Renascentium victims clambering out of their pen and onto the concrete wall pile. People are running back to their cars and tents now, the horde of zombies following close at hand in the cramped parking lot.

“Oh shit,” Carl says and he flops back down in exaggerated mock exhaustion.

“Go straight, damnit!” Mom shouts from her still reclined position. Her knuckles are white and holding on for dear life to the sides of her seat. Her fingers look brittle as if they are going to break off.

“Yeah, as soon as we’re clear!” Dad shouts, and then we all go flying up in the air as Dad goes right over the last parking lot speed bump at 45mph. In the back we all smack back down on our asses, and Mom’s hand goes flying to her head, but we are back on the road, and on our way out of the city.

I look back one more time and see only one lone motorcycle speeding down a side street. The rider’s long, white hair blows in the morning wind.

Dad rolls down the windows, and I hear the gunshots and screams fading away in the distance as I lie back down and rub my temples.