(Book 2)What Remains (11 page)

I leaped towards the couch, shielding my head
from the somersaulting wreckage hurtling headlong at me. A
deafening roar shook the walls, highlighted by a symphony of
shattering glass. All I could think was how I had to get the kids.
I had to get my wife. We had to leave right now because our
fortress had fallen. My right arm had unconsciously removed the
Kukri for the imminent bloodshed that would follow a break in our
defenses. Ringing permeated my ears after the impact sound; beyond
the ringing was a muted car alarm blasting on and off. While I
lifted myself off the couch with my left arm I imagined the debris
I would have to sift through to reach the ladder.

When my eyes regained their focus I was
astonished to see that everything was in its right place. I turned
towards the hallway hoping the breach wasn’t there. Colonel
Meows-a-lot had fallen over but Van Gough remained at his post.
There was no fire, no intruding zombies, and no wreckage. The bike
collided with something but it certainly wasn’t our house.

“
Then where in the hell did it hit?!
” I
said out loud in total disbelief.

I returned to the peephole to figure out what
happened. The front yard was brighter now, however inconsistently.
Flaming embers traced a flickering path like tiny candles wherever
the bike crashed through. The honking was coming from our car,
fully loaded for our escape, in the driveway. Each trumpet of the
alarm was joined with a distressful flash of both the headlights
and taillights that bathed the street in bursts of red. It was so
easy to focus on the car alarm that the cause of the alarm didn’t
register at first.

My ignorance came crashing down when I noticed
the car’s shape had been altered. The dirt bike’s upside-down rear
wheel jutted out from the gray tarp that covered all the gear on
the roof rack. The rest of the bike was thrust through the
hatchback door. Calise’s pink butterfly car seat was thrown so far
up that it blocked half of the windshield. I collapsed against the
wall in shock.

“What are we going to do?
How am I supposed
to save them now?
” I muttered almost incoherently to the empty
room. For a moment I was paralyzed by what had just happened.

With each passing second the ringing in my ears
faded and the honking outside grew louder. It hit me all at
once.

“
Oh shit! The alarm!
” I dropped the Kukri
by the window and stomped into the kitchen. My footsteps were so
heavy that Van Gough fell over and joined his plush comrade on the
floor. I fumbled around in the darkness at the wall just inside the
kitchen until I felt the rectangular key box. Not a second later I
pointed the key fob towards the door, hitting the button as
furiously as I would pull a trigger. When the alarm stopped I
allowed myself to breathe at last.

I recovered my bent blade from the carpet
feeling like I’d insulted an old friend by tossing it down the way
I had. The Kukri was returned to its home at my side then I wiped a
mixture of sweat and tears out of my eyes. Although I knew the
resting place of the bike, its rider’s fate was another story. I
didn’t want to look but I had to know. The only reason why our
walls weren’t being bombarded with rotting fists was because the
dead had something more appetizing to focus on. I peered through
the space in the boards again. Even with the strobe light of our
car alarm removed from the equation I was still granted minor
visibility from the glowing embers remaining from the crash.

Shadow puppets of the infected danced around the
fallen man like a pack of rabid hyenas. Flickers emanating from
random bits of smoldering wreckage ensured that the horror of their
feast would not be concealed by total darkness. I didn’t want to
see yet I couldn’t pull myself away. Their swarming fury was a
shocking reminder of how animated their ghoulish hunger could cause
them to be. If there was any semblance of a higher power left in
this world then the horde would consume him so completely that he
wouldn’t be cursed to rise up and join their ranks.

Two of them fell back from the group. Squinting,
I pushed up against the wood to get a better view. The pair of
creatures swatted at each other like bickering siblings. It wasn’t
until they wobbled a few feet past the feast that I knew what would
cause them to behave in such a way: they were fighting over food.
All that kept them moving in unison was the poor man’s leg, torn
away from his body. This ungodly game of tug-o-war was enough to
pull me away from the peephole.

I solemnly walked through the hallway, stopping
to upright the cat guards. My body urged me to collapse right there
and give it all up.

How can I face them? How can I tell them what
just happened?

Desperate thoughts ran wild through my mind. I’m
sure Sarah and the kids were terrified upstairs but I had to pull
myself together before having to appear strong again. Past the
point of the drop down ladder I decided to go into Maddox’s
darkened room instead of my own. At the far end was an old
cushioned chair that seemed like a good enough place to gather my
thoughts.

I trudged along as a soldier would in the
minutes after battle; weighted by tragedies past, present and
future. In spite of the darkness, my foot swept in front before
each step in effort to clear any random toys that were a permanent
fixture in my son’s territory. The familiar action brought about a
moment of déjà vu. It felt like I’d gone back in time and I was
trying to give the boy a kiss before running off to the police
station for my shift.

“Zombie... heh. I thought I knew what a zombie
was back then,” I muttered. A smirk snaked through my sorrow thanks
to the irony of it all.

Habit assured me that the chair was in reach. I
swiveled around, ready to collapse on the familiar resting spot
until pain shot through my foot on the final step. I lost my
balance, thumping down to the deep seat. Random toy-related
injuries were equally familiar in Maddox’s room; oddly, the
practice of grinning and bearing through the pain of a die-cast car
under your foot to keep from disturbing a sleeping child also had
its uses when the undead were at your doorstep. Arthritis, inflamed
from the tight grip I had around the Kukri moments before, yelled
in my knuckles while my aching digits massaged under the sock where
the toy had pressed.

“What the fuck did I step on?” I grumbled,
feeling around in front of the chair. My hand met an awkwardly
shaped block with wheels; I knew that this was the culprit.
“Goddamned Hot Wheels...”

Naturally, all of the flashlights where in the
attic so I pawed through my pocket until I found the tiny Bic
lighter that had been used to light the candles around our
Thanksgiving table. Such a tiny flame seemed blinding at first then
my eyes focused on the throbbing spot. The lack of blood was a
relief because a limp from stepping on a toy didn’t seem like a
suitable injury to cause the demise of any zombie fighter.

I looked at the spiky suspect vehicle parked on
the arm of my seat. It was a mail truck, a shrunken version of the
perpetually tardy box on wheels that flew through our street six
days of the week. I couldn’t look away from it; something about it
caused sparks of an idea to tear down the walls of dread that
brought me in the room to begin with. The lighter was hot, burning
long enough to sear my thumb tip. My recoil snuffed the light and
sent it to the floor. Darkness washed over me again but things were
different now because I had a plan.

Under the ladder I whispered, “
MADDOX!
”
and shuffling feet responded on the floor above. “It’s okay. It’s
just me. Let the cord fall back down so I can pull the ladder.”

He inched it through its drilled hole in the
ceiling plank. I couldn’t see more than six inches in front of my
face yet I knew that my hand would find it dangling within reach. I
had barely cleared the opening before getting knocked over by three
sets of loving arms.

They held onto me for several minutes before I
could wiggle free. Sarah kissed my cheek then whispered in my ear.
“Is the guy on the dirt bike...?”

I shook my head. She tried to keep the
conversation between us even though the kids were attached. The
biker’s demise was so loud, though, that hiding the truth would be
a futile effort. What I witnessed downstairs was a nightmare. I had
no desire to share any of it with them but they needed to know why
things had changed.

Over the uneasy quiet Maddox said, “I heard the
car alarm. Did you set the car alarm off to scare the motorcycle
man away?”

“No, Monkey, I wish that’s all it was.” He
looked confused. “Listen, guys.... the man on the dirt bike
crashed. He fell off and the monsters got him.”

“Did he die, Daddy?” Calise whispered like she
was telling a secret.

“Yes, baby girl. The man died. But, even though
the monsters got him, I’m pretty sure they won’t be able to make
him into a monster too.” Sarah frowned. She was able to read
between the lines enough to know this meant the man’s death was bad
enough to keep him down. “There’s something else though...”

“Why don’t we finish dinner?” Sarah said. “I’m
sure we can talk about this tomorrow. We should talk about happy
things during Thanksgiving dinner.”

As much as I agreed with her assessment, I had
to tell them the truth. “
No.
” Surprise from my
uncharacteristic defiance overcame the smile she tried to show.
“When the man lost control of his bike he fell off but his bike
kept going... it crashed into our car. We’re not going to be able
to use it to get to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

They were frozen for a long moment. Maddox spoke
up first, “If we can’t stay here then how are we going to get
there?”

“I have a plan that starts with us filling our
bellies right now then us getting some sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m
going to get up early and head out to find us a car; we can leave
the day after that. Regardless, we’re getting out of here and
everything will be alright.”

Soon after dinner we went to bed. I was grateful
for the deep sleep granted to me that night. When my adrenaline
stopped pumping, it joined forces with a full belly to ensure I was
down for the count. The beeping of a watch alarm was likely all
that stood between me and a day spent gloriously
less-than-conscious.

Then the dread sank in seconds after I opened my
eyes. There weren’t many days when you could wake up knowing that
by the end of that day you’d either save your family or get
yourself, and vicariously them, killed. Sarah heard the alarm and
silently rose with me. She reached behind a nearby box, pulling out
my trusty green backpack. I smiled at the faded green pack with its
American flag stapled to the front pocket. It had seen better days;
rust colored stains from blood, almost certainly my own, dotted
random spots like Rorschach ink blots.

“Why a mail truck?” she asked quietly with a
glance over her shoulder to the mass of blankets covering our
comatose children. “Wouldn’t it be easier to check some of the
other houses for keys to another car?”

“I thought about that, but it would be too
risky. We don’t know where people would keep the keys so who knows
how long, or how many houses, it would take before we found
something worthwhile?”

“But the post office?”

“It’s around the corner so it should be easy to
reach. More importantly - it should be empty. What if we break into
a random house and it’s filled with an infected family?”

She shrugged. “True. I doubt we’d be able to get
into any houses without drawing the wanderers to us either.”

“Exactly. The post office has a vehicle bay in
the back with a tall fence around it and one side is wooded. If,
and I do mean
if
, I can get in, the keys shouldn’t be too
hard to find. Also, think about how good a mail truck would be to
drive to my parents’ house. I imagine they are decent on gas
mileage, they usually aren’t all that loud, there is an enclosed
area in the back for passengers and supplies while the front is
more protected around the driver than the average car.”

I saw the wheels turning in her head as she
pondered the possibilities. The night before I had done the same
while I sat downstairs after stepping on the toy car. “They are
good in tight spaces for normal mail routes. You told me how much
of a mess some of the roads are... could come in handy.”

My bag was packed with a day’s worth of snacks,
water, a large roll of duct tape, two flashlights, a bottle of
ibuprofen and a sock filled with .22 caliber ammo. “Are the bolt
cutters still in the shed?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Smart ass.”

She planted a wet kiss on my lips. “You better
believe it. That’s what you have to look forward to when you return
so make sure you do or the zombies will be the least of your
worries.”

A sweet little yawn squeaked out from under the
blankets. It signaled that the morning was about to progress as
normal. I knew that when the sun rose there wouldn’t be a moment to
waste.

“My plan is to be back by sunset. I’ll take my
bike so I can move quickly around them. You guys spend the day
getting everything together. ”

“Will you be able to get by them in the front? I
thought you said it was a mess out there.”

Maddox rose from the bedding with a stretch, so
I lowered my voice in case he was listening. “I’m going to take my
bike so I can get around them quietly and quickly. We need to
assume everything that was in the car is lost.”

“Morning, Mommy. Morning, Daddy.” Maddox’s voice
was scratchy from sleepy remnants. Calise began to stir after
hearing her big brother.

“Good morning, Monkey. I hope you slept well
because there is a lot of work to do today. You and your sister
need to help Mommy pack. The rule is two bags of clothes each; pack
something for both cold and warm weather, pack it tightly since
there won’t be much room. When we leave I don’t know if we’re going
to be coming back here anytime soon.” I immediately felt bad for
throwing so much on him immediately after he had woken up.