Finally, after two long, terrifying hours of playing a deadly game of hide and seek, the clubhouse loomed across the street. We huddled in the garage of an old apartment block, staring at the area we had to cover to reach the clubhouse. The clubhouse sat a good two hundred meters away, over a darkened road, parkland and a car park. "Ready?" Mike glanced at each of us. We all nodded, although I am sure everyone felt as exhausted as I did. Emma took Sarah in her arms and I picked up Alex. Jessie slipped her hand in Michele's. The poor child had not said a word this whole trip.
I reached over and cupped her face gently. Those serious brown eyes sought mine, searching for reassurance. "You're doing so good, Jessie. I'm really proud of you."
I glanced up at Michele. "Both of you."
They smiled at me and tightened their hold on each other's hands.
We slipped across the empty road and into the bush parkland. A curlew cried its haunting call nearby. Another curlew picked up the melancholic tune. I'd always like the forlorn sound before but tonight it was unbearable. The cry of unendurable loss.
"Here they come." Lucas called out softly. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the corpses streaming across the park towards us. What the hell? I wondered in frustration and weariness. Could they smell us? Were they communicating with each other somehow?
"Pick up the pace, folks." Mike called, coolly.
"Mike." I huffed, Alex already a dead weight in my arm. "We can't keep this pace up."
"I know. We'll find a vehicle at the clubhouse."
A scream brought us to an abrupt stop. Turning around, my heart seized in my chest. In the distance, Emma was struggling with a corpse. It had pounced on her from the cover of nearby bushes. Hampered by Sarah clinging to her chest, Emma struggled to pull away.
"Emma! Sarah!" I screamed.
Thrusting Alex into Mike's arms, I sprinted back. To my horror, I realised the horde were closer to them than I was. How had I let them fall so far behind?
Emma looked up at me, her face frozen with fear. Glancing around, she saw the horde stumbling with eagerness towards her. She recognised what I had already seen: they would reach her before I did.
3
With desperation, Emma wrenched her arm away from the corpse but as she turned to run, the corpse threw itself onto her, knocking Emma to the ground. As she hit the ground, Sarah flew out of her arms. Immediately, the creature reared up and sank its teeth into Emma's neck.
"No!" I screamed futilely. I heard a faint agonised cry behind me.
Emma turned her head to meet my eyes. So much sorrow and regret.
"
Look after Lucas."
She mouthed at me.
Sarah sat up, a few feet away, crying. I was almost there. And so was the horde. They reached Emma and fell on her like a pack of hungry dogs. And just like that, she was gone.
A silent scream echoed through my head as I arrived at the scene a few seconds too late. A few corpses were stumbling forward, reaching out clumsy arms for my Sarah. Swooping down, I scooped her into my arms and raced on, feeling their cold fingers brushing my skin. I kept running, knowing it was our only chance.
My lungs burned as I struggled to stay ahead of the dead mob. Sarah clung to me, crying with fright, as I ran across the road. If I could just reach the apartment block, we would be okay. I grabbed the doorknob of the nearest apartment. Locked. Glancing around, I saw the zombies stumbling eagerly across the road. I ran down the side of the building to the adjoining garage. There was an internal door, I remembered.
Please don't be locked
, I prayed.
Inside the darkened garage, I felt for the doorknob. Sweet mercy, it turned in my hand. As the sound of moans entered the garage, I stepped into the darkened stairwell of the apartment block. A few seconds later, we were behind the closed doors of the bottom apartment.
Gasping for breath and trying to control my trembling limbs, I listened carefully for any sounds of movement within the flat. Thuds on the garage door and the front door made it difficult to hear anything but, nonetheless, the apartment
felt
empty.
Carefully, I balanced Sarah onto my hip and held my parang ready as I investigated the flat. No signs of blood, no body. It was mercifully empty. Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, I placed Sarah on the kitchen table and slowly sat down in an old, rickety chair beside her.
"Wan' to go home, mummy." Sarah wailed, her baby blue eyes welling up. I stroked her curly hair, unable to say anything. My heart was just too broken. Emma had been my partner in crime for so many years. We had worked together, griped together, even gone on girls' adventure holidays. She reminded me that I was someone other than a wife and mother, as important as those roles were to me. And now she was gone. Dead because she wouldn't sacrifice my baby to save her own life
. Oh, Emma
.
The banging on the front door became heavier. There were more corpses gathering there, I realised, and if they didn't give up, the flimsy door was going to give way. And if not the door, the glass in the windows certainly wouldn't hold up for long. I needed a plan for getting out of here.
A click. The back door, I realised, feeling sick. Spinning around in my chair, I was dumbfounded to see Mike walking towards me, blood dripping from his machete. "Mike! What are you doing here?!"
"I couldn't
not
come." He said simply, coming to kneel beside me and take my hand comfortingly between his rough ones. God, I couldn't deny how happy I was to see him.
"Oh Mike, you idiot." I cried, tears pouring down my face. The look of tenderness in his eyes made my heart ache even more. "The others..."
"Ken's using a buggy to take them to the creek that separates the course from the marina. They're going to wait there for us. I made them promise to go on if we don't join them in the next half an hour, though."
"Oh God, Mike." I laughed tearfully, horrified and touched in equal measure. "They need you! Without you there, they won't make it."
He smiled at me. "Yeah? Funny, they said the same thing about you."
"You shouldn't have come," I whispered. "But I'm so happy to see you. I always feel stronger with you, like I can do anything."
He smiled, reaching out to stroke my hair reassuringly.
"You're the strongest woman I know, Lori. You fight, love and play with every inch of your heart, body and soul. You've done nothing but amaze me since the moment we met." The warmth in his eyes left me in no doubt of his sincerity.
The sound of cracking glass brought us quickly to our feet. As I feared, the window was cracking under the pressure of all the bodies outside. From the bedroom, came the sound of glass hitting the floor. Even as we looked at it, the front door splintered. A hand pushed through a hole in the door. Mike swung Sarah in his arms and headed into the stairwell, with me following closely behind. As exhausted as I was, fear drove me on.
The garage door had already splintered. I could see a head pushing its way through. Mike sprinted up the stairs, heading for the second floor. The second apartment on the left was unlocked. We slipped into the dark apartment and closed the door behind us. I knew instinctively that we weren't alone in the apartment. I guess the body is able to hear or see things that the conscious mind cannot register because Mike immediately handed Sarah to me and pulled out his hatchet.
I swung Sarah onto my hip, parang held forward, and slid along the wall while Mike walked slowly beside me. Nothing in the lounge room. The kitchen was empty. He jerked his head at the bedroom. I nodded and followed him down the corridor.
As he pushed open the door, something shot out. I only just managed not to scream as my brain registered that it was a cat. As the large grey tabby disappeared, I breathed a sigh of relief. Not much chance the cat could have survived this long in a room with a flesh-hungry corpse. That only left the bathroom. The door was closed. I hesitated. Maybe I should just leave it like that. Anything in there wasn't likely to be able to get out.
As I deliberated, Mike slipped by me and pushed the door open. A moan sent a shiver down my back. Glancing at Mike, I glimpsed a fleeting look of sadness on his face as he looked inside. "Stay here." He ordered me as he walked in.
Yeah right
. Putting Sarah down, I gave her a firm 'stay' signal and then I followed him in.
A little girl of about two with dead eyes and a bloodstained mouth faced us. Long dark ringlets framed an angelic, plump face as she stood naked in the bath. Her mouth opened and shut as she reached futilely for us. Dried blood pooled on the floor before her and bloody fingerprints marked the walls of the bathroom.
I couldn't help but join the dots. The child had been infected first and had turned while her mother was bathing her, maybe in an attempt to bring down her fever. From the amount of blood on the floor and walls, I guessed the child had torn out a major artery when she'd bitten her mother and the woman had quickly bled out and died. She'd then wandered off, leaving the child trapped in the bath.
"We can't leave her like that." I said sadly.
"I'll take care of it." Mike responded. "You find a way out of this apartment."
Chicken that I was, I left him. Sarah was waiting obediently outside. Happy to see me, she held up her arms up in a familiarly demanding gesture. Even though I knew she still had a lot of pain medication in her system, it still amazed me to see how quickly she was returning to her old self.
The resilience of kids.
A look out over the balcony showed at least a hundred corpses pushing their way into the building. Even if we made a sheet rope, there was no way past them. I briefly considered going onto the roof but I had not observed a ladder on the outside of the building. We would be trapped and, come dawn, the corpses were going to be the least of our problems. At the end of the building, however, I observed a possible solution...
Thud! I whirled around as the door splintered. Mike joined me, a few new blood splatters on his t-shirt.
"Things are going to get mighty cosy in here in a few moments." He observed.
"Yeah. Follow me. I have an idea." Sarah on my hip, I hurried into the bedroom and pushed open the window. A tall mango tree loomed nearby. "If we can reach the tree, we can climb down."
Mike was silent as he did some calculations. I didn't need him to tell me how hairy an attempt it was going to be. A thin ledge ran to the neighbouring balcony. The tree stood within jumping distance of it.
He tucked his machete in his belt. "I'll carry Sarah."
I nodded silently. The gap between the building and the tree was at least five feet. Her extra weight would make it very likely that I'd fall short.
The sound of breaking wood and loud, hungry moans intensified. Hurrying to the doorway, I saw arms and heads pushing through the splintered door. I shut the bedroom door.
"We need to go. Now."
4
Grabbing a sheet, Mike made a sling around his torso, swinging his gun out of the way. "Ready."
I smiled at Sarah. "Time for a piggyback ride with Uncle Mike."
Unprotestingly, she let me tuck her into the sling. I hesitated a moment and then, grabbing a nappy from the nearby change table, wrapped it around her eyes.
"Mummy!" She protested.
"Ssh." I said firmly. "You're not allowed to look until I say so."
Once we stepped out on the ledge, we needed to proceed in total silence. I couldn't take the risk of her being frightened and alerting the corpses to our presence in the tree. She pouted but subsided.
The banging on the bedroom door made it clear that our time had run out. Over the windowsill, Mike stepped carefully out onto the slim ledge running along the length of the building. Fingers grasping firmly at the gaps between the bricks, he slid a foot along the ledge. My heart in my mouth, I watched his progress. My daughter sat trustingly on his back as he sidled along the wall, blindfold obscuring most of her face. Now it was my turn. As I stepped nervously onto the ledge, a hinge on the bedroom door gave way. The corpses would be in the room in seconds, I knew. I squeezed my fingers into the millimeters-thin gap between the bricks and resolutely slid my feet along the narrow ledge, one at a time, until I had left the safety of the window.
My fingers quickly started to shake from the strain of holding on to such a narrow gap. Just keep moving, I told myself firmly, one foot at a time. Time seemed to slow as my focus narrowed to my fingers and toes maintaining contact with the building. From the corner of my eyes, I could see Mike's comforting shape. Finally, I saw him clambering over the balcony and as I, too, reached it, Mike grasped my hand firmly and helped me over the railing. Gasping, I stretched my aching fingers.
"Ready?" Mike queried gently. I nodded.
As ready as I'll ever be.
My fingers dug into my palms as he balanced carefully on the balcony. Even though I trusted Mike with my life, watching him prepare to leap across a five-foot gap with my daughter terrified me. I needn't have concerned myself. He made the leap with a surety I could only envy. Balancing on a thick outlying branch, he gestured to me.
My turn.