the exodus

we are wandering around the complex where we live. it is night, but worse, the brown kind of night. like the desert. like abandonment. we are a pack of survivors.

near the house, there is a man, a beggar - we have often ignored him, or pretended to. tonight, he is yelling like we owe him something. trying to follow us into the house. cursing. we close the front door and it almost hits his nose he is following so close. we can see that he has sores along his face. he is banging on the door. catie, the oldest of us goes to the door and, though we plead with her not to, opens it. it is less because she is kind and more to prove she is the decision maker. her voice is what counts. as soon as the man enters, the sores on his face seem worse. i offer to call an ambulance for him. he says no. catie says no. she feeds him in the kitchen, i sneak into another room and dial 911.


later, we are on a school bus - there are many of us and we are trying to get to safety many towns over. one by one the people on the bus are starting to change - their faces spreading with sores, their eyes going cold, crooked as they are consumed by something distinctly not human. it's spread by direct contact and many of the kids are trying to rub their head on mine as though the goal is to spread as far as possible and they are being driven by this.

i get a hammer from the bus driver, who won't stop until we get there. here is worse than there he somehow knows. i am kicking people in the head, hammering them, using the fork of the hammer to remove chunks of flesh from their face. they are laughing. aside from this, the bus is remarkably well behaved.

we pull over to pick up a hitchhiker. it is raining and i am at the front, standing in the door, thinking about making a break for it. the girl in the front seat, still a girl, looks at me with pity as if to warn i'll never make it out there. when the door opens, i tell this roadside man that we are all full up and shut the door, watching him turn away. the rest of the bus - the survivors - yell to let him on, intending to throw him to the others. better you than me. i reopen the door and call to him. wait, i think we can find room and let him shuffled past me to board. and the driver gives me a look of mild condemnment. he is judging me and i deserve it.

and later, a compound where a giant rhinocerous is running around a school gymnasium. it is both terrifying and the punchline to a joke that no one seems to be able to tell right.