The Perdition Tales

The Wharf, Part Two

But what became of the other survivors, of Jason, Ernie and Odi? To learn of their fates, one must follow time backward, retreating along the dimensional pathways until a crash is only narrowly averted. The escalade swung around in a wide arc, ramping up onto the sidewalk and only barely missing a fire hydrant. The tires of the green pickup squealed as they tore along the pavement, spinning out of the way and coming within mere inches of the escalade. The escalade regained its momentum and continued onward, flying away from Pizza Bell. The pickup truck, however, began slowing down as it got there, for its passengers had seen some of their fellow employees hiding out back, two of them struggling to hold a door shut while the other spun around, as if he was looking for something.

“Will you help us out here, Jason?!” Ernie yelled while Odi pushed extra hard, catching a few rotting fingers in the door and severing them. Jason ignored them as he spotted his car. He fumbled in his pocket for a moment and found his keys. He ran toward his car, dodging corpses as he ran, and made it to his trunk. He jammed the key in the lock, tore open the lid, reached in and pulled out…his sword.

The silver sword glinted in the sun, blinding those corpses that still had eyes. His hand seemed to vanish into the dark, black handle as he swung the blade, whistling as it cut through the air. They groaned and began to move forward toward him, but Jason swung his sword, chopping here and there, slicing corpses in half or decapitating them. He moved through the crowd like an ancient Japanese man, hacking and swinging until no living corpse remained. Soon, the entire parking lot was motionless and littered with the bodies of people with the misfortune of dying twice. Ernie and Odi jumped up and ran from the door as corpses spilled out. Jason ran, screaming, into the fray, dispatching every corpse he came into contact with, and never once was he bitten. Soon, only a dead silence filled the air. Jason leaned his sword against his shoulder and smiled, proud of his accomplishment.

There was a groan from nearby. Jason turned but he couldn’t see anything. Then there was another, and then another, as if he was now surrounded by a new army that he couldn’t see. “Get over here, Rev!” Odi yelled. Jason turned to find him and Ernie still struggling by the back door, which banged and buckled a bit as a swarm of corpses swelled behind it. Jason frowned in confusion and gripped his sword tighter, but he only felt empty air and his hand absentmindedly formed into a fist. His sword was gone. His eyes growing wider, he looked over to see the trunk to his car still closed, and he felt the keys pressing jaggedly inside his pocket. But even worse, the ground was no longer littered with walking corpses. They were all still up, and they were moving toward Jason, blocking his car and invading his heroic fantasy with their own, harsh reality. All those days spent inside his own head were working to his disadvantage this time.

Jason began to back toward the door, unsure of what to do, when a green pickup truck suddenly shot out from behind the dumpster, the corpses in the way either going flying or becoming trapped underneath and getting crushed by the weight of the vehicle. “Quick, hop in the back!” Jason heard a familiar voice say. He didn’t have to hear it twice. Motioning for the others, he hopped into the flatbed of the pickup. Ernie abandoned the door and came running, Odi only half-a-step behind. They leapt into the flatbed and the pickup tore away, barreling through corpses as it fled the Pizza Bell parking lot.

“Good God, Terry!” Ernie toward the driver through the now-open window of the truck’s cabin. “Thank-you for saving our asses!”

“No problem, Ern,” Terry responded as he sped away from the doomed pizzeria. He was one of the other drivers, like Jason, and he had a pretty good reputation for helping out the other drivers when they needed help. He was shorter than Jason, with dark hair and an equally dark beard on his chin. He wore body armor, not the kind worn by the military but the kind for bodybuilders. “We were passing by and thought we’d check in for the evening and see how you all were doing,” Terry said. Odi chuckled at the sarcasm of the statement. Terry began to slow down and swerve a bit, trying to avoid the various cars that blocked large portions of the road.

“Hey, Jason!” the man in the middle - Floyd - said. He was a cook and occasional server, he was fairly tall and thin. “Chik-chik-chik kah-kah-kah,” he said, repeating it a few times. He loved to do this around Jason: connecting Jason’s name to the Friday the 13th franchise and imitating the slasher’s catchphrase (if a catchphrase it can be called). “Chik-chik-chik kah-kah-kah…”

“What the hell is going on?” the woman to Floyd’s right asked. Her name was Ruby. She was a server at Pizza Bell and, about half the time, a shift manager. Among the management, she was preferred by the drivers due to the fact that she was a fairly young female manager, and all that was therefore implied. She had blondish hair and tended to have vibrant eye shadow, each day a different color.

“We don’t know,” Ernie said. “These people just freakin’ came outta nowhere.”

“Well why were there so many at Pizza Bell?” Ruby asked. “It’s like you guys were in the middle of a swarm or something!”

“We were at the end of the block,” Jason said calmly. “It must have come from the other end and started moving toward us, the numbers picking up as it came our way. We were just last in line, so we got the heaviest swarm in the area.”

“Lucky us,” Ernie groaned.

“Maybe they were sniffing you out, too,” Floyd said. “I mean, you’re cooking all that meat, like the meat lover’s pizzas.”

“You mean they could smell that from outside?” Ernie asked.

“Maybe they have a really good sense of smell,” Floyd shrugged. “Maybe you should have just given them everything from the freezer.”

“I think they wanted something a little warmer than that,” Odi said, staring out into the darkness. The sun had fallen beyond the horizon by now, enveloping the whole town in the nighttime shadows.

“Where are we going?” Jason asked.

“We were planning on going to the mall,” Ruby said. “Terry and I saw that in Dawn of the Dead, and it seemed to work out for those people, at least until they started doing some really stupid things.”

“That’s not going to work,” Jason said. “That mall is going to be packed with people.”

“But the mall should be closed by now-”

“And how long has this outbreak been spreading?” Jason asked.

“Oh…” Ruby said. “Well in that case we could try to catch Meridian Street or Rhake Road. Those go straight out of town.“

“Sounds like a plan,” Terry said. “Let’s just hope not many other people had the same idea.”

By this time, they were passing the post office, which was stood quietly empty beside the massive College Park Mall. Ernie saw some smoke off in the distance and stood up to see where it was coming from. “Hey, I think the firehouse is on fire,” he said. He stretched as high as he could to try and get a better view, the wind whipping at his face. “Yep, it’s definitely blazing over there.” At that moment, Terry ran the car over a speed bump that he’d forgotten about. The entire pickup bounced as it shot over the upraised concrete, and Jason and Odi held as tight as they could to the sides of the flatbed. Ernie, unfortunately, had nowhere to firmly grip and he tumbled back and then over the short door of the bed. “Stop!” Jason yelled as he saw Ernie doing a barrel roll along the asphalt and disappear into the shadows behind them.

“It’s a little late for that!” Terry yelled. Odi motioned up ahead and Jason looked to see that the pickup was barreling straight into a swarm of corpses, a huge group that made the crowd outside Pizza Bell look like a three-man crowd. If they slowed down, the crowd would smash the pickup to a stop; their momentum was all they had to get them through this. “I’m going for Ernie,” Odi yelled to Jason over the moans and groans from up ahead. “You have about five seconds to decide whether or not to join me!” With that, Odi leapt into the air, tucked and rolled out onto the asphalt, tumbling into the grassy ditch to the side. Jason held his breath and jumped behind him.

Jason hit the ground hard, rolling and cart wheeling until finally coming to a stop, his arms and legs scratched up and a bleeding gash on his cheek. But miraculously, not a single bone was broken or even sprained. He seemed to still be in relatively good shape. As soon as he caught his breath, he dove for the ditch where Odi waited, pressing his hand against a thin gash in his arm. “Careful,” Jason whispered to him. “They may be able to smell that.”

“I think they’re distracted by the car,” Odi said. “We need to move now.”

They jumped up to the road and ran to the other side, hiding under the trees, which blocked the light from the streetlamp. Odi and Jason ran hunched over, moving as quickly and silently as they could. It was less than a minute before they reached the spot where Ernie had tumbled out. At first, they didn’t see anything: the street was empty and silent save for the distant screams and sirens from far off. But then Odi spotted a movement in the ditch across the street. Jason followed as he ran over to see Ernie struggling in the ditch with a woman who looked almost alive, though a pale yellow color. She groaned and almost seemed to growl as she snapped at Ernie, who tried desperately to shove her off. But she was like a rag doll; any time he shoved an arm, it pushed back at an impossible angle, as if the woman wasn’t even aware that her extremities were constantly tumbling into and out of their sockets. Her teeth snapped and Odi reached forward, gripped her by the jaw and throat and then twisted. Her neck snapped with a horrible creaking sound. “You okay?” Jason asked Ernie as he struggled to his feet.

“Bruised and battered,” Ernie responded. “Plus I think I may have a concussion, but otherwise I’m okay.” He held his hand, which was oozing blood. “I’m telling ya, ya have to be careful when you shove their heads away. Their jaws snap like a gator’s.”

“You were bitten?” Jason asked.

“Yeah,” Ernie said. “I take it that’s bad. Dammit!” He shook some of the blood off his hand and angrily kicked at the side of the ditch. When he’d calmed down, he turned back to the others. “Well I’ll stick with you guys for now, but if I turn into one of those, then…hell, I dunno. Do whatever you think is safest.”

“So what do we do now?” Odi asked. “The corpses block the road to the west and Pizza Bell is to the east, with us caught in between. I suppose we can run through the park if we need to.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Jason said, looking across the street. There was a small amount of smoke drifting out of the woods. “There’s a good chance the firehouse may have started a forest fire, and we don’t want to get caught in that.”

“So where do we go?” Odi asked.

“The junkyard,” Ernie responded.

“Are you serious?” Odi queried. “There’ll be no food or anything there!”

“But it’ll be safe from the forest fire,” Ernie responded. “It’s across the street, and metal doesn’t burn very easily. Plus, we’re bound to find something we can use as weapons there.”

“He’s right,” Jason said. “Besides, we don’t have anywhere else to go. We’re caged in.”

“We can take Chessie to the town hall!” Odi suggested.

“That road goes right past the mall,” Jason countered. “As well as past an entire neighborhood. It’ll be swarming with corpses.”

Odi stood up, looked around nervously - noting the smoke drifting out of the park while he did so - and sighed. “Fine,” he said. “To the damned junkyard.”

Bartley Mechanics’ Garage and Junkyard stood just a little ways away from Pizza Bell, with almost nothing in between them, except for a few small shops and businesses. The junkyard was a massive and derelict area filled with old, demolished cars and piles stacked high with various car parts. The front shop was attached to the garage, and those stood to the side of the opened and unchained gateway into the junkyard itself. It was eerily quiet inside, and Ernie, Odi and Jason wandered and meandered between cars, always looking out for any corpses that may have wandered inside. As they passed one car with a busted trunk, Jason cautiously lifted the trunk and it squeaked open. He reached into the trunk and grabbed a tire iron. Odi walked over to another car and saw a large monkey wrench that must have weighed a good five to ten pounds sitting on the hood. He picked it up and smiled a bit, then passed the grin on to Jason; they were feeling just the slightest bit safer. “How you feeling, Ern?” Odi asked quietly.

“Eh,” Ernie groaned. “Really dry. I feel like my body’s shutting down, but I can still move.”

“How long’s it been since you were bitten?” Odi asked.

“About seven minutes,” Jason answered, looking at his watch.

“Damn, that’s quick,” Odi responded.

“Well he didn’t help things by throwing a fit back there,” Jason said. “That got his blood flowing faster, which would in turn spread the infection faster.”

“Does it really work like that?” Ernie asked.

“It sounds plausible,” Jason said as he shrugged. “It seems like something that would make sense.”

They turned and walked deeper into the junkyard, not knowing exactly what they were looking for or where they were going, but just moving. They passed beneath the crusher-conveyor and moved amid more piles of cars stacked on top of each other. All of a sudden, there was a grinding noise and the conveyor sputtered to life while the crane near it also began to power on. Spotlights flickered on, filling the junkyard and nearly blinding them before it dimmed back down. “Who the hell turned those on?” Ernie asked.

“It could be someone messing around at the power plant,” Jason said. “Maybe these machines were on and the junkyard lost power, but now that it’s getting power again-”

“Do these machines really work like that?” Odi asked.

Again, Jason shrugged. “It’s always possible,” he said.

Odi just shook his head. “Maybe it’s the damned gremlins acting up.”

“Gremlins?” Jason asked. “You think there are gremlins here? Those were made up for a movie.”

“No, I was talking about the mythological gremlins,” Odi responded. “You know, a soldier says the instruments on his plane are acting funny, so he blames it on the gremlins hiding inside the electronics.”

“Whatever, dude,” Ernie groaned again. His skin had turned yellow by now and he was shuffling his feet, clearly drained of his energy. “You know, a big, fat meat lover’s pizza would sound so good right now. Minus the bread and the sauce, though.”

“Hey, Jason, don’t move,” Odi said, his voice low and steady. “There’s a big-ass wasp on your neck.” Jason froze as he felt the tiny prick of the wasp’s legs. It waited in one spot for a moment and Jason could feel its stinger bouncing up and down. After a moment, it flew off, back toward the reeking, black thing standing nearby.

The creature was the color of tar, its skin rotted away with bits and pieces of bone sticking out. It groaned like the rest and moved forward, swarms of insects and bugs flying around it in little clouds. Its clothes were indistinguishable from its skin, molded and rotten as if the whole creature had been hiding under the water for a few days. But the hair and the fingernails stuck out, long and jagged, broken and a lighter shade of black than the rest of the corpse. It stumbled forward and groaned again, picking up speed as it honed in on the three. Ernie and Jason ran to the creature’s right, leaping onto a car and then climbing onto the car that sat on top of it. Odi, on the other hand, ran the other way, scurried up the wheels of the crane and barricaded himself inside the cab, rolling the window up.

Ernie and Jason climbed higher and higher, up car after car, until they reached the level of the conveyor. “Come on!” Ernie yelled. “Up here!”

“Are you insane?!” Jason screamed, but as a black hand latched onto his foot, he took Ernie’s advice and - after kicking the corpse in its bug-ridden face - leapt over the gap and onto the conveyor, where Ernie waited for him. The two backed away as the corpse climbed up and then crawled quickly onto the conveyor after them. It groaned and moaned, leaving a black trail of dead flesh and crushed insects in its wake. It rose to its feet and began shuffling toward them as the enormous electromagnet hanging from the end of the crane’s arm went swinging by, issuing a powerful gust of wind as it did.

Jason turned to see Odi fumbling at the controls, trying to figure out how to work them. The crane’s arm moved erratically and swung back, again just barely missing those on the conveyor. Jason spun the tire iron in his hand and began walking forward, toward the corpse. Ernie began walking with him, approaching it. They didn’t want to, but the conveyor was moving backward toward the furnace and they’d have fallen in if they didn’t start moving forward. The corpse’s eyes opened a bit wider as the distance between them closed. The conveyor moved through an area with a large column on either side of it and Ernie swung out, holding on and disappearing from sight. Feeling the heat from the crushing furnace at his back, Jason ran forward and jammed the tire iron into the corpse’s stomach. It lodged in there and the creature only moaned some more and swung its arms at Jason. But he dove around it, leaned all of his weight onto his hands and kicked backward, slamming his feet into the corpse’s back. The creature tried to turn but it was too late, and it stumbled backward into the furnace. At first, some of the fires dwindled, but then they roared greater than before. Before the creature had time to crawl out, two great, steel jaws slammed together and crushed what was left of it. Jason stood up and began walking backward, his eyes on the furnace and his mind on his life.

Odi pushed buttons and twisted knobs, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing. The crane’s arm swung madly around, the enormous electromagnet hanging from it flying around like a rock in an ancient sling. And then, by the sheerest of chances, the electromagnet made contact with a steel Goliath, the pile of cars by which Jason and Ernie had managed to get atop the conveyor. The entire pile grinded and fell over, crushing a few corpses that had been wandering below or climbing on the pile itself. There was now no path to the conveyor; Jason and Ernie were safe.

Odi, however, was trapped in cab of the crane with a growing number of corpses climbing up and banging on the door. Each second, their numbers grew, and eventually, he set some gears, grabbed the monkey wrench and began pounding on the window opposite the door. After a few hard hits, the window cracked and then finally shattered outward. Odi climbed through, ignoring the cuts and gashes he endured in the process, and then started climbing up onto the arm of the crane itself. He slipped for a moment and cried out “s**t!“ as the wrench fell from his fingers and bounced down into the dark grating below. Slowly he climbed, trying not to get thrown off as the arm continued to spin and jerk. He looked back to see that some of the corpses had smashed their way into the cab and fallen onto the controls, thus causing the erratic behavior of the crane. Odi got high enough and began to go across the crane like monkey bars, using every ounce of energy he could muster for the task, not knowing where he was going but knowing what he was escaping from.

The crane began to spin, and Odi held on dearly, feeling the wind ripping at his face. All of a sudden, there was an enormous crash and Odi was thrown through the air, carried by his own momentum as he heard the crackling of enormous amounts of electricity frying through damaged circuits. He flew toward the conveyor, trying to land on top of it…

Jason turned just in time to see Odi hurtling straight for him. Unable to duck out of the way in time, his eyes grew wide as Odi smashed into him. They both tumbled off the conveyor, but Jason was just barely able to grab its surface and jerk the two of them to a halt. They dangled there, Jason groaning as he held one hand on the rough surface of the conveyor and the other supporting the full weight of Odi. “I’m slipping!” Jason said. “See if you can climb up!”

Odi tried reaching up but anything to hold onto was too far for him to reach. Jason’s hand bled as it slid back along the conveyor. He cried out in anguish and then, as the last bit of energy sapped from his body, his arm went limp and they began to fall.

A hand shot out from above and latched onto both Jason’s and Odi’s. Jason looked up to see a very pale Ernie laying on the conveyor, each of his hands holding another person. “Thank God you have long arms!” Odi yelled, laughing as he began to climb up Ernie’s arm. Jason closed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried to climb, but he didn’t have the strength or energy for it. When Odi had climbed up enough, he reached down, grabbed Jason by the shirt collar and hoisted him up, too. Finally, with a loud grunt, all three of them tumbled and fell back onto the motionless conveyor.

After he caught his breath, Odi sat up and looked around. “What happened to the conveyor?” he asked.

Jason propped himself up on one elbow and looked around, his eyes finally settling on the electromagnet that was lodged inside the machinery beside the crusher-furnace. “Looks like the crane destroyed the engine running the conveyor and then got stuck. Both of them just broke.”

“Just like that?” Odi asked, still gasping for air. “We can’t be that lucky.”

“It’s the angels,” Jason said. “They’re keeping an eye on us.”

Odi looked over at the electromagnet and the machinery that it had destroyed. The impact was the perfect angle, and it had just enough force to lodge the magnet inside and break the crane. “Very few times in a person’s life do they see luck like this,” he said. “What do you think, Ern?”

But Ernie said nothing, keeping his back to the others as he mumbled gibberish, his hands kept like claws before his face. His breathing was ragged and Jason and Odi both stood up slowly. “Ernie?” Jason said, moving closer. Neither he nor Odi had their weapons anymore, so they were nervous. “Ernie, you okay?”

Ernie suddenly spun around, his eyes dark and his skin looking very thin and pale. With a groan, he hobbled to his feet and began shuffling toward Jason and Odi. Jason tried to kick him back, but Ernie latched onto Jason’s leg and took a bite out of his calf. Jason howled in anguish while Odi ran up, trying to shove Ernie off. Ernie looked up and dropped Jason, who fell to the ground and struggled to crawl away, his leg leaving a trail of blood behind him. He heard Odi scream and then there was a moan that drifted away, broken by a thud from far below. Jason jumped and spun around in response to the hand on his shoulder, but it was only Odi. “I shoved him off,” he said. “Think that’s grounds for a write-up at work?” Jason chuckled a bit through the pain and look off the edge of the conveyor. They were about twenty-five feet off the ground, but he could still see as Ernie slowly rose to his feet and began limping away, his arms hanging limply and his endless moan drifting out into the darkness as he, too, vanished from sight.

“Screw what I just said about the luck,” Odi said, holding up his hand. It was bleeding like Ernie’s had, with visible tooth marks visible in his palm. “I don’t know what the hell kind of luck we have. Good one second and bad the next.” Odi stood up and began to walk along the conveyor. “You were right about the angels. They’re here, Rev, the valkyries. I can feel them watching me, waiting to take me to Valhalla.”

“What are you talking…” Jason began to ask, but then he stopped, remembering some of the things Odi had told him about Odinism. The valkyries were angels who came to take warriors to Valhalla, to paradise. But they only took those who…

Odi sighed. “It took Ernie about ten minutes to change, so I’d say that gives me about ten minutes of fighting before I lose it. I’m going out like Odin.” Odi leaned over the side and smiled. “Take it easy, Rev.” And then he jumped.

Ten minutes went by, then twenty, but still nothing happened to Jason. He looked at his wristwatch every thirty seconds, and constantly checked and re-checked his pulse, but there was no change. He didn’t feel sick at all, he didn’t feel like he was rotting and he developed no uncomfortable yearning for meat. The only thing that changed was his leg going numb. Maybe he was going into shock. Maybe not. Either way, Jason was still conscious and normal to watch Odi begin to stagger, then mumble and finally go limp and start shuffling around, moaning and groaning as he wandered out into the dark.

With the pain in his leg finally subsiding, Jason was able to weakly stand up, and he looked out at the town. Houses burned and the night sky was lit up by an enormous fire in the park across the street. The forest burned. There was the screech of tires as Jason saw Terry’s pickup driving up Chessie, apparently still looking for a way out of town. Floyd was gone, only Terry and Ruby still visible inside the cabin. But in the flatbed of the truck, a humanoid fire clawed at the back window. Soon, the truck disappeared from sight, fiery corpse and all.

Jason collapsed back to the floor of the conveyor and tried to figure out why he was immune to the disease. What had he done differently than the others? How had he lived differently? After a few minutes, he gave up and went to dressing his wound, something he should have considered long before. But that was back when he was going to become a living corpse, when there was no need to dress any wounds because of the inevitability of living death. He tore the leg from his pants and wrapped it around the wound. The bleeding had stopped, but pressure would prevent any clotted wounds from so easily opening back up again.

Only he had survived. But why? he thought. Why am I the only survivor? Why am I immune? Usually, in the movies, people only begin to die when they make mistakes, when they start doing stupid things that a calm, logical person wouldn’t think of doing. But Jason had made mistakes. They all had, and yet he remained. Maybe it’s not enough to just not to do something stupid, Jason thought to himself as he watched the fires blaze. Maybe there’s something else…