     
                             JUST ONE BULLET      
                                   By
                              Black Sunshine

     "Have you ever heard that theory about earth and the sun?" I
ask Slade, squinting up at the midday sky, hoping the sun will
rob me of my sight.
     "I'm sure there are lots of theories about the earth and the
sun," Slade says, picking up the binoculars and peering through
them again at the miniature world below us.  I watch him and
silently recall my wish of going blind.  "Which one are you
talking about?"
     "Well, the one that says earth is just the right distance
from the sun to allow us to inhabit it.  If it were a fraction of
an inch closer, it would be too hot and we'd burn up, and if it
were just a little bit farther away, it'd be too cold to sustain
life."
     I look up at Slade again, but he never answers me.
     "Do you think it's an accident?" I continue.
     Slade glances at me, annoyed.  "Do I think what is an
accident?"  He stares through the lenses of the binoculars again,
the expression on his face changing instantaneously.
     "Bingo!" he says.  "Got one.  Straight down, three o' clock. 
I believe that's... Peter's Street."
     Without hesitating, I grab the shotgun and stand up, looking
down at the generic figure shuffling down the deserted streets,
headed for the tower.  I watch it for a second.
     "What are you waiting for?" Slade says.
     "Slade... how do you know it's one of--"
     "Give me the gun.  I'll do it."
     I jerk the gun out of his reach.  "No, I'll do it."
     I raise the gun quickly, squinting through the sight and
suddenly the figure has a face.  It's male, but I can't make out
any details other than the fact that it used to be human.
     I blink and pull the trigger.
     The gun shot echoes weakly down the street, ricocheting off
the tall campus buildings.  Blood splatters the road behind the
thing in dark red, wet ribbons, and it falls, almost gracefully,
to the ground.  I must have hit it in the head-- otherwise, it
would have kept coming.       
    Slade says nothing, but nods.  I prop the gun against the
rail and move to the north side of the roof.  The wind whistles
longingly through metal skeletons, the weather satellites, set up
in two corners of the roof.  I don't want to look down, but
something makes me do it anyway.  More bodies litter the streets,
bodies that I did not pump ammunition into.  A tomb-like silence
has settled over the university campus, over the entire town. 
The stoplight on Main and University Streets turns from red to
green, though no cars pass through it.  I shudder.
     "How long are we going to stay up here?" I ask.
     "Stay up here?  Where would you like to go?" he replies,
joining me on the opposite side, still carrying the binoculars.
     "We can't stay here."
     "Why not?"
     "Well..." I glance around.  Our backpacks sit unopened along
the west wall of the roof.  "We'll run out of food.  Maybe not
today, or tomorrow.  But you know we don't have enough to last
even--"
     "We have the vending machines downstairs.  And besides,
someone will come for us before then."
     "Who?" I cry.  "Who is going to come?  Who knows we are up
here?"
     Slade points at the ground.  "We have a clear view for miles
around.  If-- when-- a rescue team comes, we'll see them.  And
there's always aircraft."
     He could be so illogical at times just to try and prove a
point.  I look up at the empty sky again, the sun a jewel against
the innocent blue.  A crystal ball?  What will this future bring? 
Are there any more futures here?
     I realize I don't want to know my future.
     "Slade, you know there won't be any more airplanes or
helicopters."
     To my surprise, Slade grabs my shoulders and shakes me. 
Hard.  "Stop it!" he says.  "Someone will come to get us."   
     I swallow.  "What if they don't?"
     "They will!" His fingers dig harder into my arm.
     "But what if they don't?"
     Slade's eyes change.  Anger burns like fire deep within
them, turning blue eyes into white ice.  He thrusts me away from
him in disgust and turns to face east, toward the clock tower. 
The clock is chiming in a timeless world:  two o' clock.  How
many more days until the clock stops?
     "If they don't..." he begins softly.  "Then we'll figure out
what to do.  It can't stay like this forever."
     Why not?
     I lean back against the wall and slide down it until I'm
sitting down.  Has it really only been one night up here?  Just a
few hours?
     It really is happening.
     The thought makes me suddenly nauseous.  Over the past three
days, I have managed to make myself completely numb.  Sure, a
week ago when all the signs were becoming clearer, all the TV
evangelists had said it was the end of the world.  I had not
listened.  And I still didn't believe them.  Even now, the world
is still here... as much like hell as it seems right now.  Had
they meant instead, 'the end of the world without people' or 'the
end of the world as we now know it?'
     "What religion are you?" I ask.
     "Religion?" Slade says, smirking.  "Religion is for freaks
who need a crutch to get through their everyday lives."
     I halfway expected an answer like that.  "Oh, I guess that
answers my question.  Kind of."
     Slade blinks.  "You don't have a religious preference, do
you?  You don't seem like the type."
     "What type don't I look like?"
     "You don't dress like a religious person.  I mean, not
conservative."  He looks me up and down a few times.  I'm wearing
a sleeveless black shirt and short denim shorts.
     "So what?  I still believe in God."
     The smile fades slowly from Slade's face and he looks away
from me.  "There is no God."
     "How can you say that after all that has happened?  After we
watched dead bodies--"
     "Have you ever heard of Hume's Problem of Evil?"
     I shake my head.
     "Hume's argument is essentially this:  If there is a God
that is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, as most religions
claim, then he doesn't want evil, knows where it will occur and
has the power to stop it.  Yet the very fact that there is evil
in the world leads one to believe that God does not exist."
     "Well, what about free will?" I say.  
     "What about it?"
     "It's a good thing, isn't it?  There wouldn't really be any
point to creating a universe where you control everything that
happens." Maybe He's now rewarding those who have done well.  And
those who haven't... are left behind to fend for themselves in
the world He forgot.
     Slade saw where my questions were leading.  "I know all
about Revelations, Doomsday, the second coming of Christ and all
that."
     "And you don't think this has anything to do with God?  Dead
bodies don't just get up and start walking again, start killing,
start eating--"
     "It must be something chemical.  Something in the air..."
     "And that also is responsible for the mechanical failures
and the disappearances of millions of people all over the world?"
Finally the numbness was wearing off.  "It's August, for God's
sake, and it feels like January out here.  You think all these
are coincidences?  You think science can explain it all away?"
     Slade says nothing, but I can still read the fear stenciled
into his cheekbones and the set of his jaw.  He turns away, wind
whipping through his long, black hair.  He believed it as much as
I did, but he'd be damned before he'd admit it.  Literally.
     Slade never answers me, and I decide not to push the issue
any further.  
     It has been exactly twenty-four hours since all hell broke
loose.  I just arrived on the University of Oklahoma campus for
my second year of college two weeks ago, moving into the most
expensive dorms.  My roommate, Roxy, had been great.  She was a
lesbian, but she never tried to hit on me or anything.  I wonder
if Roxy is still alive?
     Students started disappearing all over the dorms a couple of
days ago.  After reading an article in the paper, however, I
learned that it was all over the state.  The evening news a few
hours later confirmed that it was happening all over the country.
People were just disappearing right out of their beds!  In two
completely unrelated news stories, they also reported that there
had been three airplane crashes that day, and a cold front. 
Astronomers were claiming there had been a significant drop in
the sun's radiant energy in just two days.  
     That was the last time I watched the news.  I was sitting in
the student lounge trying to make some sense out of the terrible
reception, which I later heard had given way to complete static
and none of the stations were coming in.  There was a big stink
the next morning when the admissions office had to halt
enrollment procedures due to enormous computer failures.  No one
could understand it.  
     There were people making connections, putting all the
incidents together, even then, but I was not one of them.  For
me, it took something that I knew could never become a reality in
the normal, sane world I had become so adjusted to.
     I was in Milton Hall when I saw my first resurrected body. 
I had just finished up my history class and was going downstairs
to wait for my boyfriend, Dave, and it came stumbling off the
elevator behind me.
     I didn't even know it at first.  Didn't even see it.  Dave
had just walked into the building, when someone came hurrying in
behind him.
     "They're alive, they are alive!" screamed the man who had
just walked in the double doors.  His voice was frantically
audible above the din of the other students as they hurried to or
from their classes.
     "What the hell--" Dave turned around to ask, when suddenly,
the one who had been behind me grabbed me by the hair and
struggled to sink his teeth into my shoulder.  He was so strong
and he had taken me by surprise; I couldn't get away.
     At the same moment that Dave came to help me, the entrances
were suddenly stormed by them.  Where they came from, I don't
know.  It didn't matter.  
     Once you see enough of them, you can spot them right away. 
I watched them that day, while one grasped at me, as they mauled,
killed and devoured everyone around them.  I didn't know who or
what they were, only that they used to be human, but something
outside them had changed to make that not so anymore.
     As Dave knocked his fist into the one holding me, its grip
loosened enough for me to get free.  Only then, it went after
Dave.  Dave put up a good fight, but the thing he was up against
had the strength of the devil, or so I thought then.  If I'd only
known how right I was.
     In the end, the thing slapped Dave into the wall and he went
down, blood gushing from his forehead.  He was dead.. is dead.  I
still cannot believe it.  Enough hours have not yet passed for me
to drift through my calm sea of denial.  
     All of that took place in about eight seconds.  The thing
that had killed my boyfriend looked up at me and I knew I had to
get the hell out of there, so I ran out of the building and into
the chaos, my shock levels at an alarmingly high rate.
     Everywhere I looked, there were people fighting.  It was a
battle between the living and the dead, one I wanted no part of. 
It was madness, a demonic anarchy, and I had to find a way to
survive it all.  Just survive it, then deal with it.
     I ran into the union and into a first floor bathroom,
locking the door.  I could hear it going on outside the door, and
out the tiny window on the other side of the room.  Someone
banged on the door once, but I didn't open it. 
     I'm not sure how long I stayed there.  Hours, for sure.  I
might even have somehow miraculously slept through part of it. 
It was dark, however,  when the noise finally started to die
down.  I stood on the trashcan to peer out the window.  There was
nothing out there but death, and it was everywhere.  Nothing
moved.
     My heart pounding in my chest, I quietly slid the lock on
the door and opened it a crack.  Nothing moved out in the hallway
either.  I glanced around the bathroom, looking for some kind of
weapon, but the only thing I could find was a discarded hair
spray bottle in the trash can.  I snatched it up and opened the
door wider.  
     Still no sounds in the union.
     I slipped into the hallway, walking a few steps along the
wall.  All around me, people lay, silent and dead.  The lights
were starting to flicker dramatically.
     Directly across the hall was the student bookstore.  I
hurriedly crossed and went inside, ducking around the doorframe.
     A shot was suddenly fired and a bullet whizzed past my ear. 
I gasped and turned around.
     "Hey!" I cried.
     "You're not one of them," a shocked voice said from the
shadows.
     "One of who?  Who the hell are you?"
     A guy stepped from the darkness, holding his hands up in
surrender.  "You're not one of the 'others.'"
     "Of course I'm not!" His carefree attitude made my temper
flare.  "What gives you the right to just go shooting at people? 
You could have killed me."
     "I know.. but I didn't.  I'm sorry, okay?"
     I eyed him suspiciously.  "Where did you get that gun?"
     "I work at the pizza place on campus corner, next to the
pawn shop.  I picked it up in there when all the fighting started
breaking out."  He held out his hand.  "My name is Slade."
     "Slade?"
     "Well, it's what I go by.  Who are you?"
     "Sarah.  That's what I go by."
     Slade threw me an empty backpack and walked into the snack
area, grabbing armfuls of beef jerky, sandwiches, chips, peanuts
and Snapple.  He shoved the food inside the backpack he had just
given me.
     "What are you doing?" I asked.
     "We can't stay here."  Slade moved in front of the window
and pointed at the Energy Center.  "We're going up there.  That
was we have a clear view of anything that might be going on down
here and we can stay safe until this blows over."
     Until what blows over?  I was in too great of a shock to
ask, or even to question his authoritative command that I join
him on the roof of the Energy Center.  His plan hadn't seemed
like a half bad one at the time.
     It wasn't until later that night up on the roof when I shot
my first person, though Slade keeps having to reassure me they
are already dead.  I saw it for myself that night.  I watched the
graveyard four blocks south.  I watched the dead claw their way
up from the mud and into the world where they no longer had a
place.
     The ones around that we didn't destroy wandered away to find
more action.  Now today, in the daylight, the campus was still
and silent.  It should have been serene, but it was only the
empty promise of a new, hellish world.
     I stand up.  "I'm going to pee.  I'm taking the shotgun."
     Slade finally looks at me.  "Take the Beretta."   
     I glare at him.  The handgun in my backpack has only two
bullets in it.
     "You know I can't use the Beretta from way up here.  If you
need a gun, it will do just fine for close range," Slade says.
     He's right, but still, I can't help but feel a little
slighted.  I take the handgun and a flashlight and leave without
another word, descending the metal stairs and taking away the
homemade barricade that Slade had built using one of the weather
satellites.  
     The door of the Energy Center slams shut behind me and the
hot darkness hits me in the face.  Outside, the air is cool,
turning almost sharp and bitter.  In the building, however, the
air-conditioning system had cut out during the night.  It has
become nearly unbearable inside, especially on the top floors.   
     The lights have stopped working, too.  I switch on the
flashlight, knowing that every trip inside the building is a
risk.  But it's not really a risk, is it?  That's why we shoot
them when they get too close.  And we have a good view... we're
able to see them all before they get inside.  Aren't we?  Aren't
we???
     The items I'm holding suddenly feel like useless weights in
my sweaty hands.  The bathroom is only down the hallway a few
feet.  I step carefully, being cautious not to aim the
flashlight's beam in the direction of any of the dead bodies
lying to the left or right.  So many doors... what horrors lie
behind them?  I'm so glad Monty Hall isn't here to make me choose
one.
     I reach the door to the bathroom.  Finally.  The flashlight
beam catches the water fountain next to the bathroom door and
thirst wells up in my throat.  I squelch it quickly, however. 
The water supply seems to have been tainted by something else,
something that looks like a combination of mud, oil and blood. 
It's too bad we hadn't thought to grab any bottled water while in
the student store.
     Inside the bathroom.  I catch a glance of myself in the
mirror and look away quickly, disturbed.  It was no longer me
that stared back.  I looked old, tired, yet at the same time, I
looked like someone about to be taken in because of their
innocence and naivety.   
     I hurry to the second stall, skipping the first one, because
it's already occupied.  Eternally occupied.  I wonder how long
before the body will begin to smell.
     Quickly, I pull my pants down.  I always hate this part,
because I have to set the flashlight and the gun down first.  As
I start to sit down, I accidentally kick the flashlight over and
it thuds into the hard tile.  Right before the beam dies, I catch
a glimpse of the shoe in the next stall.  Is it my imagination,
or did the foot move?
     The light winks out.
     "Damn it!" I whisper, and pick it up.  I click it on and
off, but the light doesn't come back on.  I shake it, but it
still doesn't work.  "Oh shit!" I throw the useless flashlight
onto the floor in disgust and stand up, pulling up my pants and
scrabbling with the gun.
     A noise.  From the next stall.  But that's impossible... we
already shot it... in the head...
     Panic wells inside my chest and I burst out of the stall,
running fast for the direction of the door, only I'm off a little
bit and I slam into the wall and I hear the noise again, louder
this time, closer, and I fumble with the door handle, yanking it
open and step from one blackness into another and I go to the
left because that will lead back outside to the roof and what if
it follows me?  What if it comes after me?  Will I make it?  Do I
have time?  
     My hands shaking, I feel along the wall for the door that
leads to the roof.  It has to be here.  Even with the most
impossible things happening, surely the bizarreness does not
extend to changing the locations of doorways to where I can't
find them in emergencies.  That would be total madness!
     Finally, I feel the cold metal of the door and push on it. 
Hard.  Daylight hits me in the face and suddenly, for a split
second, I am blind.  
     Not bothering to replace Slade's barricade, I pound up the
metal stairs.  
     "Slade!"
     It takes me a second to notice that there are sounds coming
from above me on the roof... the sounds of struggling?  
     My eye level rises to just above the wall surrounding the
roof.  
     Slade is pinned to the concrete ground by one of those
things, the zombies.  As I watch, the thing leans over and bites
deep into Slade's neck.  Slade screams until the blood gurgles up
into his throat and is halted in a thick, choking gag.  His eyes
turn my way before the life leaves him.  Run, they say.
     I do.
     In a panic, I bolt back down the stairs, and once again
plunge into the darkness.  There is no flashlight to save me this
time.
     Warning sirens blare in my brain as I stumble along the wall
to the stairs on the other side of the hallway.  I climb down
them three at a time, running, jumping, stumbling over soft
things in my way.  Twenty floors in less that four minutes.  My
heart leaps, skips, begs me to slow down, but I won't, I can't,
and onto the first floor I find myself, the foyer flooded with
daylight.  I pushed open the double doors and burst outside, my
heart jack-hammering in fear and exhaustion, clutching the gun to
my chest.
     Then I see it.
     The one I had shot less than an hour ago.  It's lying in the
same spot in the middle of the road, but I can see it moving,
struggling to get up.
     I step closer.
     I can see the blood and gore staining the pavement around
it, and the bullet wound I had given it in the chest (not the
head!).  It turns its head in my direction and I freeze when I
look into its eyes.
     It's Dave.
     "Sarah," he says, with obvious effort.  Horrified, I kneel
down next to him.  "I've been shot.  Some jerk-off on top of the
Energy Center I think."
     I swallow the lump of coldness that has risen in my throat. 
My face was wet.  When had I started to cry?
     "I thought I was never going to see you again," Dave
continued.  "I thought you were--" He starts to cough and blood
pours out of his chest wound.  His blue flannel shirt was black
with blood.
     "Shh... be still," I whisper, grabbing his cold hand.  "I
have to go find someone to help you--"
     His hand tightens around mine.  "No, don't leave me."
     "You're going to die!" I cry out, angrily.  I could not,
however, figure out exactly who I was angry at.
     "There's no one to help.  No way to help," he whispers.  His
eyes fall upon the gun I have in my other hand.  "Unless..."
     "Unless what?" I say, subconsciously moving the gun from his
view.
     His hand travels away from my hand and up my arm.  He grips
with what little strength he has left.  "I'm going to die.  You
said so yourself," he says, then his face changes little.  He
looks beyond me, at something I cannot see.  "Jesus Christ!  I'm
going to die, Sarah!"
     The look on his face sends a stab of loss, fear and grief
straight through my soul.  I'm sobbing now.. can't help it.
     "Help me, Sarah," he says and I know what's coming next.  "I
don't want to be like them."
     I wipe the tears from my face.  "I can't shoot you!"  But I
already have...
     "Please, Sarah, please!"
     He wouldn't be lying here begging me to do this... if it
weren't for me...
     I stand up and point the gun at his forehead, but my hand
wavers and I almost drop it.
     "Please... you can do it.  Do it for me.  I wish... I wish
I'd had more time to love you."
     His statement shocks me.  "Do you love me?" 
     "Yes," he says instantly.
     A tear drips from my chin and onto the gun.  "I love you,
too."
     Dave closes his eyes in relief and smiles.  "Thank you
Sarah."  I pull the trigger.
     His body is still.
     He's dead.  I've done it.  And where is he now?  Did I send
him somewhere where I'll never be allowed to go?

     These questions come to me after spending hours in the
university chapel.  I've been sleeping, hiding under a pew,
dreaming about my Final Judgment.  Only I woke up before God
finished his pronouncement.  So what does that make me?  Am I
good enough?
     I stand up and head out of the chapel, with no destination,
no real desire, and just one bullet to my name.
     But in the end, I know it will be how I use that bullet that
will determine the answer to my final question, the only one that
matters.


Note:  This story was inspired by Catholic theology regarding     
       Biblical apocalypse and the novel, The Dead by Mark        
       Rogers.
  
     
@ 1994 by Black Sunshine  
   
     
      
     

                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                  
     
