Category: Kingsboro Journal

My character, one of the most important characters has no name.  I know I named her once but I don’t recall what it is.  I am going to begin a new project or goal with this story and it begins by naming her Katie.  Its a sweet name and will fit the idea of the character but hopeful not write her eulogy if you know what I mean.

Katie is the youngest daughter of a tight-knit family.  This family is wrapped tighter then a Christmas present not because of love, which is there but not obvious, but because of their tendency to break the law.  //Update I found her name…it was Kali..but I think I might stick with Katie.

God only creates peace.  There is always a good reason for everything he has created but what if monsters existed that feasted on only humans.  Would we feel the same about God?  We have managed to over-power most creatures in this world.  Our worst enemy is each other but thats written off as Satan.  What if we can’t write it off.  I have a perfect story to address this if I can find it….

I am so frustrated with this project.  It was going to be my end-all for my ability to finish something but it has turned out to be too much.  I just don’t have the available time to do with it what I want.  My whole idea is this terrifying world of zombies, vampires and other monsters suddenly trust into the modern world and I can’t finish my  first.  Thinking about possibly putting together an anthology of previous stories instead but I’m afraid to start that.

I could possibly turn this story into a short but I have so much more I want to say about the character.  He is the pinnacle of the frustration I am having with my life.  Outside the alcoholism but thats highly symbolic of the  objects that prevent me from getting anything done.

I don’t know maybe I should start building the anthology.  My first story will be Charlie, many people seem to like it.

This girl didn’t need to be here, he thought and was determined to take her to the gate.

The Mustang’s engine roared as he passed the last couple of wrecked cars on its way back to the gate. The rescued girl stopped screaming and was now just sobbing. Erik wanted to offer her something but only had little food in his bag and a half-drunk pack of beer.

“Do you want a beer?” Erik asked. The girl stared at him through her tear-soaked eyes then put her head down and covered her face with her hands. ”Sorry, couldn’t think of anything else to say,” Erik apologized with a slight smile.

The gate approached quickly and immediately Erik noticed the high-powered automatic weapons on top of the wall. They jerked and then pointed themselves at Erik, the girl, and the car. Erik drove quickly until warning shots whipped just over the windshield. Erik stomped on the brake causing the tires to skate across the broken asphalt.   The noise got the attention of the guards standing on the outside of the wall.

“Hey, asshole!” shouted the taller guard, a bandage wrapped around his head to cover his bloody ear. “What the hell you doing back here.  If I had control of the guns I was shoot your sorry ass right now.”

Erik stepped from the Mustang with a weary eye on the motion-sensitive weapons on the wall.  He stepped forward till a shot ricocheted of the front of the car.

It took all the anger management Erik had not to scream and run at the guard as he pointed the rifle at him.

“Move again and it will be you next time.”

“I have a little girl.  She doesn’t need to be here.  I don’t want to leave just take her,” Erik shouted.

“You want to negotiate now?  The last time you fuck’n shot me.  Fuck off.”

“It’s not a negotiation just take her,” Erik insisted.

“I ain’t opening the gate for fuckers like you.  It’s not opening for anyone.  Anyways, your little girl doesn’t want to leave.”

The guard laughed and pointed.  Erik turned to find the little girl had walked nearly a hundred feet while he argued with the gate guard.

“Crap..,” Erik climbed back into the Mustang and turned it around.  He slowly drove up to the little girl but she ignored him.  “Little girl, what the hell?”  She walked and said nothing.

“Where you going?” Erik asked as he blocked her path with the Mustang.  The little girl stopped.  Her face was hardened and determined.  “Can you stop playing this mute game?” He asked as she stared past him.  “I know you’ve been through a lot of crap but you can’t walk through this place without me.  You will die faster then hell and I can’t live with that.”

The little girl began to sob and Erik held her.

“This little girl had blue eyes and fear on her face. For the moment, Erik’s desire to end his life stopped. All thoughts of that disappeared till he could figure out how to get this girl out and why she sat in the car to begin with.”

 The zombies banged on the driver’s-side windows till the window in the front burst.  The zombie scrambled to fit through the window.  It was halfway through the window when Erik suddenly opened the passenger front door. Erik  screamed to get their attention.  Both zombies stopped, for a moment then the zombie in the back of the Prius lept forward toward Erik.  Erik closed the door and opened the back door.  He grabbed the girl by the shirt and pulled her out of the car.  

“Run,” he said to the stunned girl as she fell behind him but she sat like a stone.  

“What is wrong with you.”  A zombie grabbed his shoulder.  The grip was overwhelming.  The muscles in his shoulder screamed.  To look into the eyes of a zombie is to look into hell itself, he thought as this beast opened his extended jaw.  Erik spun and broke the grip of the zombie and grabbed the girl by the hand.  He circled around the zombie as it watched.  Erik headed for the Mustang but it sat on the other side of the Prius.  The zombie that had busted the window would be there.  The girl saw it first and stopped immediately.  Erik crept forward not realizing he had lost her behind him.  This zombie stood a foot taller then him and was dressed in a suit and pink tie.  

“A pink tie?”  He thought as father’s day gifts ran quickly through his head.  Erik crept slowly around a burned out truck and watched as the zombie followed.  He crept a little further then realized the girl was gone.  He looked behind him and she stood like a statue in the middle of Michigan avenue.  The other zombie, the one with the death grip, walked slowly up to her.  

“What are you doing, you stupid girl?”  I really don’t give a damn if your scared move!”  The girl stood, her eyes shifting wildly.  “Its going to get you, move!” Erik pleaded.  The girl’s eyes suddenly got bigger and Erik spun around. The zombie with the pink tie stood within a foot of him.  Erik ran toward the Mustang.  Leapt for the pistol in the passenger seat.  He turned.  He fired and missed.  The girl screamed. Ran toward Erik as he fired another shot.  The shot hit the zombie just over its left eye.  It fell immediately.  The girl sobbed.  Erik ran to her, grabbed her and placed her into the passenger seat of the Mustang.  The girl screamed but she stayed in the car.  Erik raced to the drivers seat, shooting the other Prius zombie in the head as he did so.  The Mustang roared as Erik hit the gas and turned the car around.  This girl didn’t need to be here, he thought and was determined to take her to the gate. 

Erik stopped in the center of what used to be Michigan Avenue and turned off the engine. The road ahead was unkept after six years of neglect.  The designers of the wall around South Kingsboro ensured that a mile stood between the kaleidoscope of destruction and the large city center of South Kingsboro.  Before the infection, the city held around 500,000 residents.  Now, the city is a dumping ground for the infected.  Of course, occasional idiots that want to kill them self are also welcome.

Erik stared out the front window of the Mustang.  The city sits quietly in front of him.  Cars litter the road ahead. Erik assumes the cars have stopped where the beasts feed on them.

nothing moved anywhere within hearing distance.  No animal life or birds.  The wind seemed to even skirt around the city.  A scene from a disaster movie sat in front of him.  Two rows of cars heading toward him and another two heading away from him.  Each row a jagged line of empty metal shells.  There was no clear way to stay on the avenue if he wanted to drive to the center of Kingboro.  Erik stared in front of him then at his bag of belongings.  The first thought, “should I eat before I end my life?”

“Of course you should,” shouted that familier voice within his head, “you dope.  If you are going to kill yourself you might as well have the strength to fight off a couple of them.”

No argument there, Erik thought.  The left-overs would have to be first but when he opened the aged meat and potatoes they showed their age.  Erik tossed the whole container out onto the grass scribbled road.  The smell of the rotten meat pinced his nose before it left his hands.  He searched the bag and found a pair of less-then-frozen pot pies.  Eating them cold would suck but he didn’t exactly have a microwave available.  A fork sat on the bottom of the bag and he grabbed it and ate the pies.  When he finished he tossed the trash out onto the road.  Thats when he noticed the first zombie.  A woman, her arms holding her head and partial torso above the broken asphalt.  She dragged what Erik could only guess was entrails behind her though they were blackened and dirty.  She stood over the discarded meat and potatoes eying it like a famine-laden child.  Erik hadn’t expected to attract attention so quickly.  He was still half mile outside the entrance of Kingsboro.

“Gut-check time,” he thought as he searched the area around the Mustang for more but all was quiet.  He seemed to only attract this one disabled zombie.

The questions were all there, “Where did she come from?”   “How long has she been waiting for food?”  “What did she do before she was a zombie?”  This creature was to be Erik’s nemisis till death.  A creature that scavenged for food desperately while struggling to stand on two hands.   Her face and hair was remarkably preserved.  She was an attractive woman in her time.  Her clothes, presumably a blue blouse, was ripped open and draped over her shoulders.  It revealed a belly that was thin but scarred.  The scars followed down her belly to her partial waist then ended in a black mass of congealed blood.  Her body ended with a long rope-like black mass with items hung upon it like grapes on a vine.  It was a disgusting showing of the power wielded by the Creator, how possibly this creature could still be alive.

Erik placed the fork, he had used to eat the cold pies, into his bag and zipped it up.  He started the Mustang and the powerful 271 horse-power engine startled the zombie while she ate.  She stared at Erik as a chill tickled his spine.

“What if he just woke up a dozen other zombies?”  He thought.  “What if this was now his time to fight to end his life?”  Erik slowly placed the Mustang in reverse and rolled away from the partial zombie and found a clearing that allowed him to go around the pile up of cars that blocked his way.  Beyond the pile up was a quarter-mile stretch of road unblocked by a mass of cars.  Erik exited the grass median and drove slowly down the broken road.  Cars sat quietly on one side of the road or the other none blocking his slow progress.  It wasn’t until he stopped the Mustang to clear some debris from his path when he realized the zombies were trapped in the cars.  A pair of zombies, one in the front seat and one in the back, banged on the glass windows of a Prius that sat next to him.  They screamed, muffled by the glass.  Erik tossed the debris off the road when he noticed something strange within the back seat of the car.

A small girl, no older then 10 sat perfectly still in the back seat.  Erik could see the fear in her eyes through the filthy windows.  She wasn’t frothing at the mouth to get at him.  She sat still staring at him.

“This is not real,” he thought and walked around the Prius to the other side.  He looked in the window, careful not to attract the attention of the zombies that still banged on the windows.  The little girl still sat staring out the other window and Erik was about to walk away with the assumption that she was truly dead when she moved her head.  Slowly, she turned toward him keeping her body perfectly still.  When her eyes met his he saw life.  Not the dead white orbs that the partial zombie had or the ones on the other side had.  This little girl had blue eyes and fear on her face.  For the moment, Erik’s desire to end his life stopped.  All thoughts of that disappeared till he could figure out how to get this girl out and why she sat in the car to begin with.

The worst feeling in the world is watching your wife leave to visit her new boyfriend.  Erik thought he’d done a good job standing beside his wife as she struggled to fit into what he believed was an awesome marriage.  The scene played out vivid and loud till she was finally gone.  Erik decided he’d had enough.  He packed up a small gym bag with a couple days clothes and all the food from the refrigerator.  Even the mustard, mayonnaise and last weeks Wednesday dinner sat uncomfortably within the bag.  When he finished with the food he grabbed the bottle of Southern Comfort saved for this occasion and took a swallow.  The syrup-colored liquid paused near the center of his throat and burned.  Erik relished the burn as it finally sank down into his depressed organs.

His car, an impressive 1965 Mustang, sat in the driveway waiting to take him to the end of the world.  No one polished their cars anymore, even the classics.  They had far bigger things to worry about but Erik spent three days scrounging for wax and soap from the busted shops and home around West Lincoln Rd.  He didn’t care that a city of horror sat behind a tall stone wall on the south-side of Kingsboro.  Nor, did he care what horror would breach the wall as he drove closer to it.

“That’s right,” he told his terrified conscious, “I’m going to walk through the gate, and stand in the center of hell and let them take me.”  He then swallowed another mouthful of Southern Comfort and sat in the driver’s seat.  The whiskey swirled through his body as he navigated through the wreckage of Kingsboro till he approached the wall.  It was a 15- foot high megalith of a barrier.  Made quickly of stone and concrete, anything that could be found to build it.  It was like a kaleidoscope of disastrous prevention.  He turned the wheel left and followed the wall.  Brown, Green and red paint mixed with stones.  The memories of a previous time secured into a barrier.  On the top of the wall sat automated weapons that moved occasionally with the slightest of movement on the other-side of the wall.  Suddenly, from within his conscious screamed.  It had enough and was attempting to stop him.  Erik stopped the Mustang, the entrance appeared a short distance away.  He sat quietly negotiating with an obnoxious voice of reason.  “It may be crazy, what he’s doing,” he reasoned, “but it had to be done.”

With his conscious quiet he moved the Mustang forward, hitting the gas a little hard and almost thrusting the right-side of the car against the wall.  Luckily, he recovered but sadly this attracted the attention of the guards at the gate and they began to approach.

“Well, it had to happen , eventually,” he reasoned.

He did have a plan B, sitting under the drivers seat.  The .45 was polished, cleaned and loaded like everything else.

The first guard walked up to the beautiful machine admiring it like an attractive woman.  “What are you doing?” He asked, his tone jealous.

“I want to go inside,” Erik said with a terse smile. The guard smiled back.  His companion, standing by the gate, quickly flipped up a cellphone and started dialing.

“Sargent..” the companion began but the first guard waved him off and he ended the call.

The first guard began to negotiate a settlement.

“I will let you in if you give me your car.”

“Really,” said Erik. “No”.

“That is my best and final offer,” said the guard smiling.

“I have 200 dollars for entrance to the other side of the wall,” said Erik

The guard thought quietly and discussed it with a set of telling looks to his companion.  Erik could tell that this was not going to end well.  He pushed the .45 from under the front seat.  He leaned to pick it up but the guard interrupted him.

“Ok, we will let you in for $200 dollars.”

Erik smiled and handed the guard a wallet.  “Credit cards too, take them and spend what you want, I don’t care,” he added.

The guard smiled and stepped away.  Erik eyed them carefully as he pulled up to the gate.  The guards followed.  The guard’s companion had joined him as he discussed the situation.  Erik grabbed the .45.  It sat at his side while the guards talked behind him.  The first guard approached.  His footsteps heavy in the loose stone below them.  Erik leaned to the right as a rifle blow just missed his head.  Quickly, he grabbed the .45 and fired a round that took half the guard’s ear off.  The guard fell away.  Erik quickly opened the driver’s door, but stumbled as the whiskey settled into his knees.  He grabbed the young guard by his blue uniform and put the .45 into his open mouth.

The other guard stood motionless.  “Likely crapping his pants,” Erik thought.  “Open the goddamn, gate you punk kid,” Erik threatened.  The guard’s companion complied. 

“Didn’t think I could move that fast, did you,” Erik said to the first guard.  He then stepped back into the Mustang with the first guard bent toward him bleeding onto the steering wheel and floor.  “Your bleeding on my car,” Erik growled and pulled the Mustang forward.  The guard struggled to shuffle sideways but Erik didn’t care.  He past the guard’s companion and entered the gate.  He released the guard and hit the gas.  The Mustang roared to life.  Erik expected to dodge bullets but none came.  He had finally fulfilled part one of suicide by zombie.