DeadBorn (2 page)

Her parents intercept us in the hallway and treat us to homemade sponge cake with fresh strawberries. There isn't much to say so the four us sit in silence and eat before Holly and I retreat up to her bedroom.

We start an action film that neither of us can get into because we're both so nervous about what may or may not happen between us. I tell Holly I've got condoms and she blushes; Holly never blushes. I blush, too, but I get them anyway so she can look at them. It isn't like we haven't had sex before, but when we did, it was at Holly's grandmother's house in a guest room. There were people everywhere and we had to be quiet. Also, we didn't use a condom. Holly tells me I'm lucky she didn't get pregnant since it would've ruined her baseball career.

We have sex and it's better than before but still not great. Holly tells me we'll get there.

We fall asleep and a few hours later, I wake to find hell crouching on my doorstep.

CHAPTER 2

Onslaught

Twenty Minutes After …

I wake up and Holly isn't in bed. It's five in the morning, so I'm surprised she isn't there. I check the bathroom, but it's empty. I brush my teeth because my breath smells like old whipped cream and sponge cake and I don't want Holly to smell it when she comes back. I climb into bed again and wait. Fifteen minutes later I get restless and crawl back out of the covers. I grab a sweatshirt off the back of the computer chair and slip it over my arms. Then I tiptoe into the hallway and check the guest bedroom first. Maybe Holly finally got tired of my snoring and bailed on me?

She isn't there. The pink and white room sits in shafts of quiet light from the street lamps outside. Already, morning is coming, teasing the edges of the sky with bright fingers. Outside the window, I catch a glimpse of somebody standing in the street. I take a closer look and realize that it's Holly.

I race downstairs, trying my best to stay silent so that Holly's parents don't wake up. It isn't too difficult; the front door is already open, so I walk outside and pause at the edge of the walkway that runs between the flower beds.

Holly is standing in the middle of the street still dressed in her pajamas. I move closer to her, surprised at how cold the pavement is under my bare feet. It might be summer, but the nights are still chilly.

“
I had a dream,” Holly says without turning to face me. Her mussy hair is blowing around her face and sticking to her lips which are moist with tears. I squeeze the edges of Holly's gray sweatshirt together and try to zip it. It's too small for me, but I finally manage to connect the tracks and pull the zipper up to my belly button. Holly is staring at the hill ahead of us where the houses get a little bit bigger, a little bit nicer. The sun is rising behind it, tinting the sky a pale yellow, like butter. “You were in it,” she says as I reach out and put my hand on her shoulder. Her pink robe is billowing out behind her, brushing the skin on my arms. I shiver and step forward, wrap my arms around her neck and put my chin on her head. I don't know what she's doing outside, but I can tell that whatever the reason, she's upset. “Only you were dead,” she adds as she pulls away and turns to face me. Her face is frozen, tight with fear. I don't say anything. I'm not sure what to say really.

Holly turns back to the hill and takes a step forward. I can hear something now. A shuffling, like a group of people walking.
A parade?
I wonder, but that's silly. It's far too early for that.
A practice parade?
Do parades practice? I don't know, but I stand there with Holly anyway.

“
I had a dream, too,” I say, trying to smile and lighten the mood. Holly isn't looking at me, and she isn't smiling, but I keep going. “You were in it.” The shuffling is getter louder. “Only you were …” I pause. Someone has just crested the hill. It's a man, or maybe a woman, dressed in a black cloak. It's strange enough that I stop talking and stare. Holly is shaking now and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. The figure pauses and waits there, limned in red-orange from the morning sun. The black fabric is whipping in the breeze and the shuffling is loud enough now that I start to wonder why none of the neighbors have come out to see what it is.

Heads are appearing in my field of vision. They're far enough way that it takes a moment for me to realize that something is wrong. There's a scent in the air that I don't recognize but that sets me on edge. It smells like the docks on a summer day, or the fridge at Holly's cabin, after the power had gone out. The way the venison had spoiled in the hundred degree heat. Rot.

The figure holds up a hand and the sleeve of the cloak falls away revealing pale flesh and feminine fingers. I'm pretty sure now that the figure is a woman. Her hand drops and her finger points seemingly straight at Holly's chest. Holly's breathing hard and her eyes are glazed. She's scared, terrified maybe. This makes me terrified, too. Something is wrong here, but I can't put my finger on it. Holly spins to face me and grabs at the fabric of the sweatshirt. There's not much extra so her fingers dig painfully into my skin.

“
We have to go,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. Faces are visible now. Skewed faces, terrible faces, dirty faces. Something is really wrong. I try to ask Holly what it is, but she starts to drag me. “We have to go
now,
” she says, pulling me. I stumble after her for a moment, pausing just long enough to look behind us.

The shuffling is louder, faster now. The people in front start to run, lope, shuffle. They're not walking right. Something is
very
wrong.

Over the crest of the hill comes a horde of rotten things, spilling down the streets in a sea of broken skin, dirty clothes, blood, bones, flesh. I see things I've never seen before spilling from the abdomens of human bodies, splattering the ground. I scream, but Holly's smarter, tugging me into the house. I catch a glimpse of some of the things breaking off and spreading out, heading towards the houses on either side. There's no time to warn them. The creatures are already halfway down the hill and they're fast, much faster than me, maybe not faster than Holly. Holly throws me against the wall and slams the door, locks it, deadbolts it.

“
We have to call 911,” I say stupidly, but it's only stupid because I have no idea what's going on. It's all I've been trained to do in a crisis. I don't even know how to perform CPR.

“
No,” Holly says and her face is white. She drags a decorative table in front of the door and starts up the stairs, presumably to get her parents. I stand there in my flannel pj pants and nearly lose my mind when the first crash hits the door. Without looking behind me, I bolt up the stairs after Holly, terrified but certain that this is a dream. It has to be. How the fuck else can I explain what I've just seen? My brain keeps trying to convince me that what's happening isn't real. It continues to do just that until I round the corner and find Holly panting in her parents' doorway. There's sticky stuff on the floor by her feet, like strawberry jam, and there's a strange smell in the air, like old dirt and copper. I come up behind Holly and find myself face to face with a skeleton.

It's standing in the middle of the room, white bones stained with dirt and blood. It's standing there even though it shouldn't be. It has no muscles, no ligaments or tendons, or even skin to hold it together. Yet it clacks its teeth and moves towards us, boney fingers reaching for Holly. It even manages to grab hold of her robe before she snaps out of the trance she's gone into. I don't blame her because I've just gone into one, too. On her parents' bed is a mess of bloody things that are moaning and writhing, rising up from the blankets with fluids leaking everywhere. They're reaching for us, for Holly, for me. Bart and Kelsie are nowhere to be seen.

Holly reacts before I do, reaching for a vase on her parents' armoire. She cracks it over the skull of the boney creature and grabs it by the ribcage.

“
Galen!” she screams as its jaws clack and it gnaws at the air over Holly's shoulder like it's reaching for me. “Get my bat!” I hesitate too long and Holly loses her ground, stumbling back into me with her fingers still wrapped around bones. The three of us fall to the floor in a heap and the skeleton grabs a mouthful of my hair with its teeth and pulls. I scream as I try to push it way, but it's of no use. The thing is monstrously strong. Like a pit bull, it has its jaw locked on my hair and I can't free myself. Holly wriggles out from between us. “Hold on, Galen,” she cries as she stands up and pauses. The bloody, messy things are coming for the door, shuffling across the wooden floor between the bed and the hallway. Holly reaches out, grabs the doorknob and closes it in their runny faces. Before I can let out another scream, she's running towards her bedroom and disappearing. I can't think through the pain, so I live in the moment, certain that Holly will come back.

One of my hands is wrapped around the spine of the skeleton and the other is pushing at its jaw, but I'm careful to keep my fingers out of reach of those snapping teeth. Better my hair gets ground between them than my flesh. Holly comes back a hundred times quicker than I expected and raises one baseball bat above her head as a second one crashes to the floor. “Close your eyes,” she tells me and she's eerily calm. The wooden bat comes down and smashes into the spine of the skeleton, cracking it in two. The worst thing is though that both parts keep moving. The creature's boney knees are digging into my crotch and drawing the breath from my lungs while its fingers scratch at the skin on my arms. Only Holly's sweatshirt is keeping the pain bearable. “Galen,” she shouts and my name ends in a sob. “Close your eyes!” I follow my girlfriend's instructions and seconds later, a rush of air whispers across my skin, and a crack, like a shotgun blast sounds. Powder showers my face and the pressure on my scalp lets up a bit.

I open my eyes and find that Holly's knocked most of the skull away. The creature is still moving, but luckily, the only part that's still attached to my hair is a bit of jaw. Holly and I are able to push the rest of the bones off of me and I stand up just as her parents' bedroom door opens.

“
Come with me,” Holly says and she grabs my arm and pulls me along the upstairs hallway. I try to look back at the monsters, but she won't let me. “Please don't,” she says and I can tell that Holly knows a lot more about what's going than I do.

“
Is this a dream?” I ask her as I pound down the stairs behind her pink robe. The windows are broken and people are climbing in, strange people, people with injuries that should see them in the emergency room, not in Holly's house.

“
No, Galen,” she sobs as we turn left and sprint away from the rotting stench and the screams from outside and the front door that even now is being cleared by the creatures. They seem kind of mindless yet they're moving the table and unlocking the door. It's a strange sight, one that blends in with the rest of the weirdness around me and makes me sweat like a pig. We move down the hallway at a sprint, past pictures of Holly's family and even some of me that hang crooked over the old wallpaper. At the end of the burgundy carpeting and the dark wood paneling, there's a white door that doesn't seem to fit. I've been in here before: it's where Mr. Arget keeps his comic books. “Inside,” Holly instructs me and even though I can tell she's afraid, she sounds strong, unbeatable. She's determined to save us both from whoever – whatever – the things outside are.

“
Can you help me?” I ask as I reach up and try to pry the teeth from my hair. Even though there's no longer a head attached, they're still closed tight. Holly doesn't answer and locks the door behind me. She moves past me in the crowded space, bumping the computer chair out of the way with her hip. This room is strange, with a low ceiling and shelves that take up most of the floor. There are books from every genre in here, all ratty and torn, all read and loved a hundred times each. I shake my head and run a hand through my hair.

Holly is on her knees and in the process of opening a safe.

“
The combination is my birthday,” she says as tears fill her eyes and overwhelm her to the point where she stops moving, where her fingers freeze and curl around the edge of the safe like she's bound to it. I hear movement in the hallway and try not to cringe as Holly finally starts moving again and continues twisting the lock.

Then a fist smashes through the door, slices right through the wood like a warm knife through butter. I stumble back and trip over Holly, go down hard, and hit my head on the safe. I'm seeing stars as Holly pushes me out of the way and opens it, grabs a gun and turns it on the doorway.

Her father's face is tilted sideways, gazing in at us blankly. At first, I think he's drunk; his eyes are glassy, face pale, movements sloppy. Then I realize, he's dead. His neck has been split like a smiley face. It gapes open when he moves and spills fluid down his front. I wouldn't call it blood. It's crimson, but it's too runny, like soup.

“
What the hell?” I ask, but my voice barely comes out of my throat. It's trapped there in fear, frozen behind my tongue like a row of untried soldiers facing their first combat. My head spins at the idea of a dead man walking, kicking the door, clawing at it. The skeleton thing, the bloody monsters, now Holly's dad. It's too much. I scream.

“
Zombie,” Holly sobs as she clutches the gun between her shaking hands then fires. Her father's head explodes in a spray of black blood that splatters the wall behind him, obscuring skewed family portraits and dripping like wet paint.

“
There's no such thing as zombies,” I whisper automatically, still lying on the floor and watching Holly's arms drop to her sides. Her eyes are blank now, kind of glassy, like she's seeing something that isn't here. “There's no such thing,” I repeat as silver-black light leaks under the door and teases my bare feet. I stare at it for a long moment before my attention is forced to more pressing things.