The Living Dead

As he steered into the parking lot, maybe he noticed the absence of any other cars. Or maybe he saw the lights on in the donut shop and assumed he'd arrived during a lull in business. He parked the truck, climbed down from the cab, and walked toward the glass door. There are times I see him striding up to the counter, his eyes on the racks of donuts on the wall opposite him, not aware of anything unusual until he sees that all the racks are empty. In what feels to him like slow-motion, he turns to the tables to his right and takes in the floor slick with blood, the remains of the last patrons scattered across the tables. Then I think, That's ridiculous—there's no way he would not have seen all of that right away. The second he swung open the door, he would have smelled it. Chances are, he wouldn't have had to go that far—he would have seen the blood splashed across the windows and immediately turned around. Either way—whether he bolts out of the place or walks away without going in—he would be distracted, shocked by what he's (almost) seen. Maybe the closest he's been to something like this has been an image on the TV. It's the reason he doesn't pick up on the feet dragging across the tarmac until the eater is out from around the front of the truck and practically on him. The driver's eyes bulge; if he's never been this close to such carnage, you can be sure he's never had an eater lurching towards him, either. His feet catch on one another and he trips, which causes the eater to trip and fall on top of him. For one horrifying moment, he's under the thing, under that stink, the teeth clacking in his ear as it tries to take a bite out of him, those hands pawing at him. He drives his right elbow back and up into its face. Fireworks of pain burst in his arm but the eater rolls off him. He scrambles to his feet, kicking at the eater's hands as they try to drag him down again, and climbs up and into the truck's cab. Maybe he jumps when the eater slaps the door, almost drops the keys his fingers can't fit into the ignition. The eater pounds the door, throws itself against it, actually makes the truck rock ever-so-slightly. The key slides into place, the engine turns over, and the driver grinds the gears putting the truck into first. He speeds out of that parking lot so fast the rear end of the truck bashes a telephone pole, throwing open one of the rear doors and tumbling a couple of plastic crates out onto the road. His foot doesn't leave the gas pedal. Let them take it out of his pay. His heart is hammering, his hands trembling on the wheel. If he smokes, he's desperate for a cigarette; if he quit, he wishes he hadn't; if he never has, he wishes he'd started.

It wouldn't have been until that Dunkin' Donuts was a good thirty, forty minutes in his rearview mirror that the driver would have felt his right elbow throbbing. When he glanced down, he saw blood on the seat and floor. He turned his arm over. His stomach squeezed at the torn skin bright with blood, the pair of broken teeth protruding just above the joint. His foot relaxed on the gas; the truck slowed to the point it was barely moving. His vision constricted to a tunnel; he wondered if he was about to faint. He took the wheel with his right hand, reached around with his left, and felt for the jagged edges of the eater's teeth. The blood made them slippery, hard to keep hold of. He dug his fingers into his skin, seeking purchase, but that only squeezed out more blood. There was no choice; he had to stop. He clicked on the hazards, steered to the shoulder, and set the brake. He did not turn off the engine. He leaned over and slid the First Aid box out from under his seat. His fingers slipped on the catch. Once he had it open, he found the bottle of sterile saline and the stack of gauze bandages. He sprayed half the bottle over his elbow, unwrapped a couple of bandages, and wiped his skin. There was a pair of tweezers in the box; despite his shaking hand, he succeeded in tugging one, and then the other, tooth from his arm. Their extraction caused more bleeding. He dropped the tweezers on the floor, next to the teeth, and emptied the remainder of the saline on his elbow. There were enough gauze pads left for him to wipe his elbow off and improvise a bandage using the roll of surgical tape.