Fumble

I don’t usually like to explain my stories, but this one is a little unconventional.  In a writing class, we had to draw a character and an action and make them into a story; I got a football player holding a baby.  I thought it was the perfect time to write a story about a long-time love of mine, zombies.  This is the result of that exercise.

“Please, take my baby,” the woman said, as the football player looked on.

He didn’t know what to do. “Ma’am,” he said. “I’ve hardly ever held kids, let alone taken care of them.”

She looked up at him, holding up her two-year-old son. “Please, he’ll die if he stays here.”

The football player, William Green of the Cleveland Browns, looked down at the kid. What the hell was he supposed to do? He grabbed the kid and held him in one arm. The woman breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much,” she said.

William looked out between the boards that were blocking the big picture window in front of his house. Suddenly, he wished he hadn’t bought the huge multi-million dollar farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Sure, it made it hard for fans and reporters to find him, but when you’re being attacked by zombies, it’s not the safest place to be.

And he was, in fact, being attacked by zombies. The woman and her child had rolled in here two days ago with the woman’s brother. They had been out driving someplace or another and had been attacked by these undead, and had somehow wandered onto his property and into his house in a state of frenzied panic.

Who would have thought zombies were actually real? Certainly not William Green, multi-million dollar starting halfback for the Cleveland Browns. Hell, nobody would probably think this could ever happen, even the movie nerds who eat this stuff up.

But this was it, he had to get out of here. Being on the road and at practice all the time, he didn’t keep much of a store of food in the house during the season, and the four of them had eaten almost everything. He had to get out of there to find help.

The plan was for him to run out the front door at to his car, which was in his garage. He had had the garage built exactly 100 yards from the front door, so he could run back and forth to gauge what his time would be on the football field. This time, though, with the zombies swarming once again as dusk set in, he would have to rely more on his stiff-arm and tackle breaking abilities than on his speed.

He looked back at the mother and the uncle, and then at the two-year-old in his arm. The kid was a bit more gawky than a football, and would probably be harder to hold on to. William nodded goodbye to both of them, turned, and opened the door. He would have to make this run with no offensive line to block for him, but that was usually the case in Cleveland anyway.

There was already one of them on the front porch. William rushed at him, dropping his upped body, and threw his shoulder into the chest of the zombie, who went back and tumbled down the steps. William went down the stairs, hitting his stride at the bottom as the whole front yard full of zombies came after him.

He was able to plow through a few of them right off; after all, they were basically only walking corpses. He gave this up, though, when one got a hold of his leg and didn’t let go until William stepped on his head, which gave the others time to close in. Time William couldn’t afford right now.

There was one right in front of him, arms out in the classic monster pose. It lunged, and William juked to the right, causing the zombie to fall on its face. If only that happened more times in the actual games, William thought, I’d be a damn all-star. But no time to think about that now, he had to get to his garage. His new H2 would show these bastards who was boss. And since it was basically a family car, he could come back and get the other two before he left.

More zombies right in front of him. He faked to the left, and jumped to the right, sending three zombies flying in the wrong direction. He had a few yards of open field, and used it to see what he had left. He was about halfway to the garage, but there were still plenty of walking dead left between it and him. Another one coming up. He spun to the left, dodging the outstretched hand of the defending corpse. If only it was this easy in the NFL, he’d have it made.

There were some coming from behind now…this is where the stiff-arm that had gotten him so far in the second half of the 2002 season would come in handy. One zombie lunged at him, and William straightened his elbow, pushing the chest of the monster to the ground. He hopped out of the way of the outstretched arms, careful not to put himself in the same situation as before when his legs got wrapped up.

About twenty more yards now, he was in the red zone. He had to score now, it was so close. A few more zombies in his way, but he could dispatch them as easily as he had the previous many that had come his way. He juked to the left and another zombie fell on its dead face. Two more were in front of him and he spun to the right, but one of them got a hand out, and William did as the Browns had done so many times before.

He fumbled.

The kid fell out of his arms and onto the ground, the zombies immediately making their way for him. Since William was in the middle of a spin move when the kid had been knocked loose, he had flown a little way, thankfully into a clear patch. William, acting quickly, ran to the kid, putting his shoulder down once again to drive into one of the zombies that was heading for him.

He scooped up the kid. Recovered fumble. No turnovers today. He was going to run this one all the way, touchdown Browns—and he was hit in the back. The kid went flying, second fumble of the day. That was about par for the Browns, especially since he wasn’t going to recover this one. Zombies piled on top of him and the kid, and all he could think was, “unnecessary roughness, 15 yard penalty, first down.”