It’s been over a month since the last episode of the Mutant Zombie Bikers Story, so you may want to go back and reread the story up until this point as I will pick up right where I left off back in April… The link is to the first post, where the story began…

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   The sound came in strangled gasps and he thought it was coming from the far end of the hallway, which would have been the master bedroom. The problem was that he would have to pass 3 dark doorways before he reached the one he would inevitably have to enter… Driven forward mostly by the guilt he felt for his own inaction, he slowly entered the hallway. In his attempts to remain silent, he feared that even his breathing would give him away but down the hall he went. Several times he heard the low sound of what he envisioned was one of the parents pained breathing.

   As he approached the doorway, he heard the sound once again… A low moan, followed by what had to be the husband weeping quietly. A renewed courage came over the man as he had to fight back the urge to just barge through the mostly open doorway to the young mans aid. From just beyond the door, the man quietly announced his presence and intentions to try to help. When no answer came he decided to go in and let these cards fall where they may. Kicking himself for not grabbing a flashlight, he proceeded to feel his way past the door jam and began searching for the source of the sounds. His feet shuffled as he continued several feet at a time into the dark room… He spoke quietly to anyone listening that he was a neighbor and hear to help… His hands found what would have had to be the bed and as he swept them out across the fabric of the bedspread, he brushed against flesh.

   He explained that even though he’d found what he was looking for, it was unsettling to be touching another persons body in the middle of the night in a dark bedroom. As he reached back to discover more details about what he had found, he again spoke quietly to the room. “I’m only here to help, please tell me what happened?” – “Tell me where you are so I can help you?” – “Where are the children?”… He said it was when he mentioned the children that he finally got a response. The leg that he had touched, began to move ever so slightly and he heard the moan again but close this time! The closeness of the sound almost made him run from the room as fear ran sharply up his spine! As it turned out it wasn’t a leg he found after all, it was a shoulder. The sound that came was close because he was leaned directly over the mans head and hadn’t even realized it.

   It dawned on him that there had to be a window into this room and if he opened the curtains maybe enough moonlight would get in to allow him to locate the woman. As he edged closer to the outside wall, he continued to ask the man questions about the children… Slowly, soft words began to come from the man on the bed… He continued his questions and proceeded to grope in the darkness until he found and opened the curtains. Moonlight streamed in and he turned his attention back to the man. Clearly he could now see he was in the middle of the crime scene, blood was splattered across the closet doors and running down the wall above the headboard.

   You watch the older mans demeanor as he tries to convey the weight of the scene and control what is obviously an emotionally charged life event. The fact that he came to his brothers neighborhood to warn others of this pending peril spoke volumes. It would seem like the easier thing to do would be lay low and not do anything to make yourself a target… Thankfully, there were still people like this man to prove that a couple weeks time wouldn’t turn all men into the kind of desperate animals that very well may be standing all around you – your neighbors!

   With the bedroom illuminated, he could see the man clearly laying across the bed. He was bleeding from multiple gunshots to his chest and stomach. Trying to speak was painful but the mention of his children was enough to keep the man making attempts to communicate. With his ear down very near his mouth your story teller heard the details of what had transpired only minutes ago from what would prove to be the only witness alive to tell them…

   Through broken sentences and pained speech the dying man explained that it was all his fault! He had gotten his family killed through his own stupidity. As this man was a young husband and father, possibly even a little nieve, he had tried to make a trade with these bikers for supplies he needed for his family. Much as the rest of the neighborhood, their food supply was getting very close to exhausted. With this in mind the man had ventured out to where he had heard from another neighbor that these bikers were running a sort of trading post. A deal was struck to trade several cases of expensive wine for a size-able amount of canned food. This young man was a wine salesman by trade and thought he had executed his best deal yet and positioned his family to survive for several more weeks on what he had secured earlier that morning. As it turned out the bikers had sent someone to follow him when he had returned home. The outcome of that trade was what this neighbor had seen after being awakened less than an hour before… The bikers forced the front door open and proceeded to retrieve the traded food back, took the additional cases of wine the man still had stockpiled… The young man had sealed his families fate when he responded to the threat of one of these intruders entering his bedroom with the golf club he had at easy reach. The club being the closest thing to a weapon the man owned. Without batting an eye the biker shot him… As he was losing consciousness he watched the biker drag his wife off down the hallway by her hair… Through sobs that were the last sounds the man would ever make, he apologised for being so stupid…

   You witnessed this older man breakdown as he relayed those details… A long silence hung in the air as this all sank in to the collective body of neighbors standing around you. After what felt like minutes had passed, the man continued with the rest of the details he had come to relay to your group.

   The young man had died literally in his arms. He knew however that this night was still far from over and more was left to discover in those dark bedrooms he had passed on his way down the hall. Without giving it much thought he covered the young mans body with the bloody comforter. His nerves were strangely steeled or maybe numb was a better description, as he moved back into the hall way. One door down he turned and entered the child’s room, this time moving swiftly through the dark to find the window. He pulled back the curtain and turned to face a certain tragedy. This time he found nothing but a child’s room, empty bed and nothing more! Thanking God, he moved back to the hallway…

   With tears streaming down his face the older man continued to tell a horrific story of nothing short of brutality at its worst. The three children had all been killed while huddling together in the oldest child’s closet. Apparently the children had all been sleeping in one room under several sleeping bags, it appeared that the parents had been trying to make an adventure out of the unpleasantness… As terrible as this had been up until now, it almost got worse as he delivered an additional detail that the crowd only came to grips with over the minutes to follow – the wife was not found in the home…

   After a few moments of reflection, the older man continued his story with the details of the following morning. As dawn approached more of the men began to find their courage. Mostly men but a few women as well came to the young families home where they found the older man digging graves in the backyard. As excuses were made to allow these cowardly men to escape reality and retreat back to the perceived safety of their own homes, one man stayed to help… It was this man that, after the bodies were buried and many long silences, brought additional details of the last few days…

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