Minda Webber's Blog

I wish for everyone who reads this…..a warm winter in front of a fire,

A cat curled up in your lap,

A silly smile of contentment,

loved ones sharing laughter,

and brittle hard days….few and far between….

I wish you God’s blessings.

Our new neighbors are pod people!���

Aunt Alice almost dropped the pot roast as she set it on the table. Dana looked heavenward as Aunt Shirley drew her spine up even stiffer. ���Pod people! Why I never heard anything so preposterous!���

Dana narrowed her eyes at her nephew. She wished she had warned Remy not to mention pod people, aliens, or any otherworldly beings. Her aunts were from a more genteel time; a time of simple pleasures, gentlemen callers and buggy rides, and they preferred to keep it that way, despising all new technology, talk of atomic threat and science-fiction movies.

���Pod people?��� Aunt Alice asked; her kindly face filled with confusion. ���Are they foreigners? I���ve never heard of Podland before? Is it near Poland?���

I am a voyager���

for a decade now done.

Over my shoulder are shadows���

or faces expressionless,

giving the impression,

I made no difference at all.

Will history record���

I���m written in the wind?

Will no one speak of me grandly?

Or will they brand me,

for what I was or what I am?

As she scrambled past the decaying corpse, her mind was screaming. Where was Caleb? Was he safe? She had to get him. Though the shopping malls isles were crowded with people running towards the exits and escalators, Lea ran towards the back of the mall, where the CD store was located. She moved quickly, scanning the view as she ran quickly past a man with part of his face missing, an eye protruding. He was recently dead, the flesh not stinking. He had a hole in his stomach and a few intestines were trailing. Lea wanted to be sick, but forced the nausea back as she ran on, searching for her son. She screamed his name. It was a stupid mistake, perhaps a deadly mistake.

he

Lea gasped as the thing��grabbed at her the fingernails dirty and torn. ��The yawning mouth was opening, blood spaced like Kool-aid around his mouth. ��It was a nightmare, a movie marathon she had Caleb had seen, a sick, sick joke. ��It couldn’t be real. ��But it was.

The mouth snapped at her, the fetish breath making her stomach roll. ��She ducked back and brought her arm up, purse in hand. ��The mouth snapped shut on her purse strap as Lea kicked at the zombie’s knee. ��It worked. ��Somehow it worked and the gruesome thing lost his balance. ��He didn’t fall, but he did let her go enough that swinging her arm and shoving hard she moved him away from her. ��This was real!

Riding out the Apocalypse.

Lea Tyler couldn’t believe it. ��The forty-three year old mother stood immobile in the first wave of attack. ��She kept glancing at the bodies falling, screaming, the blood flowing. ��At first she thought it was some movie stunt. ��Come on, zombies weren’t real! ��But the blood looked so real and the shrieks of pain and fear seemed so realistic. ��Then the woman next to her went down with a zombie riding her. ��Lea caught a whiff of decay. ��It made her gag. ��And with that reflex she realized the utter terribleness of the situation. ��They were real! ��And her nineteen year old son was picking up some CDs. ��She turned to run towards the store when her arm was grabbed roughly. ��Before she glanced back to see what horror had grabbed her, she said a quick prayer to protect her son. ��And then she turned!

The heaviest concentration of people tried to escape down the escalators, sliding, falling, bones breaking. One man shoved a slightly built woman carrying a toddler so hard that she lost the small child as it fell over the side of the escalator. The man never even glanced back; he was too busy running away. A gangbanger pulled out a gun and shot several of the people in front of him. When they fell, he climbed over them, like they were nothing more than broken human steps. The fear was ugly and contagious, spreading like a wildfire, once people got a look at what was coming.

Riding out the Apocalypse.

Where do you run, when everyone is running? When no place is safe? People scrambling for cover or to get away from the terror that was chasing them. At fist, no one could believe it was real. People were shaking their heads, wondering if this was really happening. Was it a reality T.V. show? Had a horror movie run amuck? Then skin ripped and flesh was torn off, with blood splattering faces and hands. That’s when the screams started. That’s when some realized that life as they knew it was over.