Only The Dead Don't Die by A.D. Popovich

difficult to get to their feet like they were drunk—very drunk, and they twisted about the pavement trying to stand up on their floundering legs like a herd of newborn fawns from Hades. And even though her foot was now free of her hapless shoe, she still couldn’t move, paralyzed by fear. The horror of the whole scene had her lips quivering uncontrollably, and all she could do was gape at the creeper gnawing at her lavender shoe.
    Finally, Scarlett gathered her wits and was able to reach the car door handle. Unlocked! She jumped inside, one shoe less. The creeper ripped the lavender pump from its mouth and swayed about next to the open car door ogling the shoe, then her and then the shoe again as if it couldn’t believe that its incredible good luck had just turned into incredible bad luck.
    Scarlett froze again, afraid to look at him—it. Afraid to move. Her throat felt like a lump of coal. She couldn’t even swallow. A gurgling growl snapped her back to reality, and she slammed the car door.
    There, on the front seat, where she had left them, were the keys. Even her purse was there, untouched. Everything was OK until she started the car. They quickly surrounded the car like an overzealous mob of paparazzi. But it no longer mattered. She slammed the pedal to the metal. She was gone.
    When Scarlett finally found her way out of the Nightmare on Elm Street community, she decided to take a chance and drop by Maggie’s house. She had been avoiding Maggie since the un-wedding, for Maggie had always warned her that Kevin had not been “Mr. Right.” The strange thing was, every time Scarlett got her bearings straight and headed towards Maggie’s subdivision, the road was blocked so she would try an alternate route only to find the road blocked off again. She felt like a lab rat trapped in a maze of blocked streets and abandoned vehicles.
    Occasionally, Scarlett came upon a pedestrian and would immediately slow down. And every time, she saw that same awkward gait, the bloodstained-tattered clothing—it was a dead giveaway. And, whenever she happened to see a group of them shuffling about, she immediately flipped a u-ey and headed in another direction.
    She had been forced to take so many detours that she lost her bearings, and it seemed like all the detours and roadblocks lead her directly to Berry Street. She’d start off heading east but somehow always ended back to Berry Street, so she drove down Berry Street. She passed long, wavy, lines of yellow school buses on both sides of the street. The buses sat empty: lifeless. After she drove past the buses, she could not believe her eyes. Roseville High School was nothing but a charred ruin. What the—? Actually, it looked more like the school had been bombed; it had that Syrian war-ravaged look, giving her an even more desolate feeling of hopelessness. “What’s happening?” she shrieked in a state of panic.
    Last night in the shed, Scarlett had thought that perhaps these horribly injured people were the survivors of the plane crash. But that didn’t explain her irrational fear. Also, there were just too many of them rambling all over Roseville, not just near the crash site. What sort of event would cause Roseville to evacuate? “Unless, we’re at war . . .” She nodded, “That’s it. That has to be it. War?” She was momentarily relieved that something finally seemed logical, yet the thought of war terrified her.
    Scarlett reluctantly gave up her attempt to visit Maggie and finally, after two hours, reached the safety of her own home. She paced about the living room and then on impulse decided to visit her paranoid-hermit neighbor. The man who had chained his courtyard gate. Now she knew why he had behaved in such a manner; he must have thought she was one of them: a creeper . Hopefully, he could fill-in the blanks and explain what was going on here.
    “Oops,” she ran back to the garage to retrieve the baseball bat, better to be prepared, she thought. Upon