Written for the March Madness writing challenge. Come and join us!
This was for the wildcard prompt, using images from Original Worlds (Ira Robinson), Labyrinthia Mythweaver, and HVR.
Sunset found Bobby Vee carrying a full backpack to his car, wearing his trademark blue bandana and a furious expression. He got in and drove the five miles to Bodega, a community so small, it was barely worthy of the name. The last time he had been there was twenty years ago on a borrowed bike to visit Hawley House for a dare. The rank smell of the place haunted his memory. The faded picture of a blurred figure in a hat and coat bearing a burning torch towards a large bright light, that might have been the moon, was peeling off the mildewed wall as he walked in. Daylight peeped in through holes in the roof and the long-fallen ceiling. The building looked as though it had been left in a hurry—possibly after an earthquake. He and Staines—he had always called him Staines—found a dormitory room with two rows of beds in. The large windows, the glass of which was largely intact, belied the building’s usage as a lunatic asylum. Some of them still had sheets and blankets on, jumbled, as if the residents had fled in the night. A low rumble made the building shake and Staines had rushed out, leaving him behind. Pieces of plaster had fallen upon him as he'd followed the taller boy, then some bricks had struck him, tearing his t-shirt and drawing blood. He had hated Staines since that day.
He arrived at a scene that he couldn't believe, much less describe.
People in various states of decomposition were milling around the gas station and the store that gave the community its name, as if they couldn't quite remember why they were there or what they were supposed to be doing. The stench was filtering into the car, making him gag. Nonetheless, he took out his phone and started filming. Beset by flies and maggots, they seemed unaware of his presence. Some of them were in better condition than others. They twitched and shuddered as they walked, occasionally barking facts and figures, as if they were being sent directly to their brains.
Bobby's hand clenched around the phone. “Rotting with Tourette’s,” he breathed. He was too shocked to swear. This was surely the work of that mad scientist he'd seen with Staines at Salvini’s with those women. The man who'd turned that fool into an undead mockery of manhood.
Two of the zombies fell, their legs giving way beneath them. One tripped over them and flailed about on the ground as if he had forgotten how to get back up. Bobby stopped filming, put the phone down, parked the car, then picked up the backpack and put it on, though he wasn't sure what his objectives were now. A low hum filled the air; the sound of many vehicles moving. He jogged towards it, skirting around the buildings of the abandoned development that might trap him. At the back of them was a chain link fence with a big ragged hole in it. A large full moon hung in a sky purpled by the sunken sun. Bobby went to look through the hole, and found the moon peeping through it. Below him, a six-lane highway poured traffic towards a jumble of tall buildings. “San Junipero Oil Refinery. I'd no idea the highway passed through here,” Bobby said, though there was nobody to hear him. The traffic from the right-hand side was coming through a tunnel beneath his feet, and headed towards the refinery. On the left, when he went to look, the land dropped down a sheer slope to the highway. He tucked this information away for use later on, then went back to the cluster of buildings by the gas station. The zombies were still milling about, falling over each other. Bobby jogged around them, noting the open doors of several houses. “They're all dead.”
He knew that Staines, who went by “Rankin Fyle” these days, lived—or used to live (owing to the fact that he was now a zombie)—somewhere around here. But where? He was reluctant to follow his nose down the narrow alleyway towards the chemical smell and the bright yellow light that shone through a window at the end of it. Besides, the slow thudding steps and moaning sounds of the zombies of Bodega were getting louder. And the gaps between them were getting smaller. And there were at least fifty of them. And his car was somewhere behind them.
This story follows The Tipping Point. Read the sequel, Crazy Bobby.