Free Less Than Human by Tim Meyer Page A

responsible for the pulsating pain in his arm. “What?”
    “I can take you to Harrisburg,” Ben repeated. “It's silly to travel alone. At least together, we can watch each other's backs.”
    Josh nodded. “Okay.”
    “Yeah?”
    “ Sure. Under one condition.”
    “ What's that?”
    “ You're buying the first round at the first bar we find.”
    “ Is that right?” Ben grinned, killing the engine. 
    “ Absolutely. It's the least you could do for breaking my arm.”
    They chortled softly before deciding who was going to take the first shift watching for zombies. They needed to be refreshed for tomorrow. Brand-new horrors awaited.
     
    “ G od is finished, sick of his creation and the abomination it has become, you hear? This is the end of times, the days that will lead us to the Rapture!”
    Ben awoke to the fiery, southern drawl of an evangelist. His temples throbbed and the righteous man's sermon was not helping. He switched the radio off, not remembering turning it on. Something pounded on the glass. His first semi-conscious thought was that the windshield wipers were swaying back and forth rhythmically. As the world became clear, he saw a dead woman gently smacking the windshield with her palm.
    The zombie was once an old lady, but now it was just an it , barely resembling anything human. Half of her cheek was missing, exposing grayed gums and teeth blackened with rot. She stared at him with eyes displaying no intelligence, no sensible thought or reasoning. All it wanted, all it craved , was the taste of Ben's flesh and blood.
    She was unlike some of the other zombies he'd seen in his parents' development. Some of them were quick. Really quick. Almost as fast as Ben could run. They had more will too, more motivation. The elderly corpse only made feeble attempts at breaking in. Her fists were doing little, except damaging her own body; her wrists were clearly broken, blood leaking from the torn flesh where bone peeked through. Ben turned on the wipers to wash the old woman's blood away, and she didn't seem to mind. She continued smashing her fist against the glass sedately.
    Just as the wipers dragged across the patches of dry glass. Josh snapped out of his mini coma.
    “Fuck,” he muttered. “I fell asleep.”
    “ It's okay. Look.”
    Before Josh noticed the walking corpse outside of the car, he lightly touched his shoulder. Pain shot up and down his arm. He couldn't move it. Rolling up his sleeve, he found a big purple mark where the car got the best of him. “Motherfucker.”
    “She's so... slow.”
    Josh finally glanced up and saw the old lady. She was as Ben had observed. Slow. She vaguely reminded him of his mother, only much older, and more... dead. He would never know what Meridith Emberson would have looked like in her eighties, but the walking cadaver was close to what Josh had imagined. It brought a certain sense of sadness to the forefront of his emotions, but hatred, confusion, and the pain that throbbed in his shoulder overpowered everything.
    “Definitely not like the ones back in Pine Coast...”
    “ What?” Ben asked.
    “ Pine Coast. That's were I was before you hit me.”
    “ You work there or something?”
    “ No, I was visiting,” he replied.
    Ben heard something in his voice that gave everything away. He closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't know.”
    “Don't worry about it,” Josh said. He quickly wanted to change the topic. “I'm sorry I fell asleep during my watch. Could've gotten us killed if granny here was a little more hungry.”
    “ She looks hungry all right,” Ben said. The woman opened and closed her mouth like a fish.
    “ I say we get out of here before more come,” Josh said.
     
    T hey drove west for almost twenty miles, not seeing a single person, living or dead. There should have been evidence that the world had ended, an indication that the dead no longer stayed dead. But there was nothing. Only open roads and derelict vehicles.