-34-
The gun slipped from Jared’s hands and slid down the front side of my roof. It hit the gutter and spun out into space before falling to my front yard in a powdery cloud of ash. Jared’s eyes were huge. Even from where I stood on the ground, I could see his eyes bulging behind the protective lens of his NBC mask. Tears welled and his shoulders hitched and heaved. Danni crawled up next to where Jared lay on the crest of the roof. She placed a protective arm around her son and drew him into a hug.
A body lay sprawled on the ground behind me. A small bullet wound on the side of the dead man’s head wept blood, slowly turning the collar of his blue flannel shirt to an inky black. Three more wounds peppered his back; black puddles stretching sickly tendrils towards the one on his collar. A revolver was still clutched in the dead hands, the index finger still slipped around the trigger. I had never seen the guy coming up behind me. It was a stupid mistake, something I never would have done in prison. I had gotten careless. Jared hadn’t. He was the only reason I was still alive to curse myself for being careless.
Around the back of my house, I steadied the ladder as Jared and Danni climbed down from the roof. Jared had stopped crying, but his eyes were still raw and red. Danni still had tears streaming down her face. I wanted to say something comforting, offer some sort of explanation, but what was there really to say? She had just watched her young son shoot someone. Sure, it had been to save my life, but I doubted that would make it any easier to stomach.
“Thanks, kid.” It wasn’t much and I knew it wouldn’t offer any real comfort. “You saved my ass.”
“I dropped the gun,” Jared said. “Sorry, Lucas.” He slowly worked his way down the ladder. Danni was close behind.
“Here.” I held the gun out to Jared. Danni’s hand moved towards it, but stopped and hung midair. She didn’t want her son to be part of a world where he needed to carry a gun and kill, but like it or not, he was.
“Go ahead, Jared,” Danni said. “It’s okay.”
Jared took the pistol and slipped it into his pocket. “I guess we’re even now, huh?” he said, trying to make light of what had just happened.
“Yeah, I guess so, kid,” I said. “You had to do it, you know that, right?” I didn’t want this to eat at Jared, but knew that it would. I had killed people. Hell, that had been why I was in prison in the first place, but it was different for me. I was an adult. I had sufficient time to learn to rationalize shitty situations. Jared was still a kid. His mind hadn’t hardened and become calloused like my own.
“Honey, he would’ve killed Lucas if you hadn’t stopped him,” Danni said. She was convincing herself as much as Jared.
“I know,” Jared responded. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He looked like he might be okay. I hoped that he would.
The fence on the other side of my yard shook. I watched a wave pass over the undulating wooden slats. Fingers wrapped in dried, yellowed skin grasped the top of the fence. The heads of at least twenty husks bobbed on the other side of the fence. Their dull moans drifted over the fence.
The smell of blood and sound of gunfire had drawn more husks into the surrounding yards. A worried looked passed between the three of us.
Wood protested and groaned as the fence posts splintered and broke. A large section of fence tipped into my yard. Husks swarmed over broken section of fence like cadaverous termites. More husks spilled through the opening.
Danni looked at me. Jared fired on the writhing pile of desiccated zombies.
“Run!” I shouted and pushed the two of them towards the house.
-35-
Thin fingers with skin like over-cooked, wrinkled hotdogs squirmed through the small gap between the door and its frame. I pushed against the door, trying to break the fingers and close it, but for every gratifying
snap
there were two more sets of digits. The husks had been drawn by the sound of dying men, the metallic tang of spilled blood and the promise of a meal.
Dull thuds echoed from the front of the house. Miraculously, the windows on the first floor had not been shot out, but a thin pane of glass wasn’t going to hold up long against the relentless knocking of the husks. More shadows shuffled across my front porch and darkened the windows. It wouldn’t be long before the husks were inside.
The rear door pulsed and pushed inward. I could hear the rear porch boards creak under the weight of the husks that swarmed my house. Jared and Danni ran to help me push the door back. Jared smashed at the leathery fingers with the handle of his gun.
“Danni,” I shouted over the husks’ charnel chorus, “grab a kitchen knife. Over there, in that drawer by the stove.”
Danni rushed to the drawer and the door slid a little more open. Jared opened his mouth to say something, but slammed it shut and braced his shoulder against the door. Danni withdrew a long serrated knife from the drawer. I had used that knife to carve countless Thanksgiving turkeys. Kara and Lisa loved that holiday. There were less of the commercial expectations and more focus on spending time together. They were never huge football fans, but would humor me and watch the games. Holidays never evoked strong feelings for me, but I loved Thanksgiving because they did.
Slashing at the husks’ fingers, Danni tore away ragged, dry strips of skin. I watched a yellowed knuckle bone flex as it worked into the open space.
“Get a bigger knife,” Jared shouted. He smashed the handle of his gun against the boney joint. The finger popped and cracked before twisting to a sickening angle. The remaining digits continued to grasp for us as the now useless finger dangled and bounced before snapping free and falling to the floor by Jared’s boot. I half expected the finger to inch across the floor like some sort of hellish caterpillar. It remained motionless on the kitchen floor.
Danni rushed back the drawer, grabbed a meat cleaver and ran back to the door. She hacked downward, removing fingers and chunks of palm. The husks showed no reaction and attempted to force the stumps of meat that had once been hands through the door. Danni swatted away the ruined limbs and pushed them back through the door.
Glass shattered in the front of the house. Something
thumped
to the floor of my living room. A second window broke. The shadowy outlines of husks squirmed over the broken glass like maggots covering road kill.
“Get downstairs,” I spat through gnashed teeth as I forced the back door closed and bolted it. Lisa had always complained that the door needed a window, that the kitchen was too dark. I had promised her I would install a door with windows one day. I was glad I never did. The door shook, but held.
I stepped in front of Danni and Jared as they made their way to the basement door. Four husks shambled down the hallway. I aimed high, fired and watched their heads paint my walls with sickening sprays of white, red and black. More husks crawled through the windows to take their place. I fired another round into the living room and ran for the basement.
The basement door was cheap and hollow. It wouldn’t last long.
“Come on,” Jared waved from inside the bunker. There was nowhere else to go. I slammed the bunker door shut.
“We’re safe.” Danni collapsed onto her cot and pulled her mask off.
“We’re trapped,” I said. The words came out as if they were falling apart in my mouth. It was true that the husks couldn’t get into the bunker, but we couldn’t get out either. Eventually, we would run out of food and water. Our safe haven had become a tomb.
-36-
Silence filled the bunker like floodwaters. I could feel it slowly rising, weighing us down and threatening to drown the three of us. The steel doors muffled the sounds outside of the bunker, but we all knew the husks had taken over the basement and house. Moments before the bunker door closed, we heard the cheap hollow door at the top of the basement stairs splinter and break. The husks hadn’t been far behind.
“Can’t we just wait them out?” Jared asked. “I mean, won’t they get distracted by something else and wander off? We’ve got enough food to wait until that happens.”
“Maybe,” I said. I wanted to assure Jared that he was right, but didn’t see the point in fostering false hope. The husks in the basement wouldn’t be able to navigate the stairs and probably wouldn’t hear any sounds outside of the house. I envisioned countless, leathery death heads glaring at the door of the bunker, waiting for the slightest sign of a meal. The second they got that sign, the husks would surge forward and we would be dead.
“Well then what do we do?” Jared snapped. “Are we just going to sit here until we starve?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was an honest answer and probably the last one that Jared or Danni wanted to hear. “I’m sorry. I’m out of ideas.” I slid onto my cot and stared at the ceiling of the bunker. It was concrete, oppressive and gray. I hadn’t come as far as I had believed. All I did was trade one prison cell for another. I was no closer to Kara and Lisa.
Danni and Jared shuffled around the bunk looking at the supplies and objects scattered throughout. There were no answers to be found, at least not the ones that they wanted. The gun rack loomed in the rear of the bunker. Danni pulled Jared away from the weapons.
We would run out of food and water, but we only needed three bullets. The thought was present in all of our minds, no one could deny it and our silence only confirmed it.
Danni and Jared climbed into their cots and tried to sleep. The scrape of countless leathery feet across the basement floor filled the silence that festered between us. We listened to the husks fill the basement. No one could sleep, but we had nowhere to go. We were trapped.
-37-
At some point during the night, I must have fallen asleep. I woke to an oppressive blackness and felt a flutter of panic pass through my heart and head. Jared or Danni must have turned the lights off. That was all. Nothing else had happened. I listened to them snore softly.
My right pocket vibrated.
Kara: Hi, Daddy! Mom is feeling better. See you soon? Love you!!
!
I squeezed the phone. Why did my keys have to be broken? Where was the justice in that? Plastic popped. I relaxed my grip and stared at the screen. I couldn’t stand those stupid little smiley faces and pictures that Kara and Lisa always found some way to work into a text message. They tried to get me to use the things. I resisted until I found the smiling swirl of poop. After that, Kara and Lisa were okay with me not using them.
The urge to smash my phone ripped through my mind. I hated that I was stuck, locked away from my wife and daughter again. But smashing the one thing that kept me connected to them would only punish me. I took a deep breath and let the phone slip from my hand.
Across the bunker, the radio crackled and popped.
“Lucas? Lucas? Are you there? Is everything okay?”
Senator Heathway’s voice rattled through the radio. I thought about ignoring it. I wanted to blame him for our current situation. I wanted to blame anyone other than myself.
“Lucas, are you going to answer Senator Heathway?” Danni asked. Her voice was rough and heavy with sleep. Jared stirred on his cot. I wish I had turned the radio off.
“Screw Heathway,” I grunted. “I’m going to sit here until the husks rot and fall apart and then I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“But who knows how long that could take,” Danni protested. “Shouldn’t we at least see what Senator Heathway wants?”
I let my feet hang over the edge of my cot before dropping to the floor. There was no point in talking to Senator Heathway. Whatever he wanted was sure to involve us not being trapped in a bunker in my basement.
“Lucas, are you there? There have been some developments with the monsters. Lucas, are you there?”
Senator Heathway asked again. Through the radio, his voice sounded like a hysterical robot.
“Lucas, please answer me. I promise you that I had nothing to do with those men who attacked you. I need your help. We all need your help. Please.”
I dropped into the chair in front of the radio. A heavy sigh slipped between my lips as I picked up the receiver.
“I’m here, Heathway. What do you want?” I grumbled.
After hearing his response, I wished that I had stayed asleep and never answered.
-38-
“He said that the rest of those people were heading for them, right?” Danni asked after I tossed the radio receiver aside. Senator Heathway had given that group coordinates and the rest of them were heading towards them. He was an idiot.
“Yeah, he did,” I groaned. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, suddenly exhausted and my eyes burning. “And he’s a moron. What the hell does he expect us to do about it? He’s got half an army there, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“But Senator Heathway said that most of the soldiers left. He said there was some kind of disagreement or something. It’s mostly woman and children there now. They won’t be able to fight off that many people. We can stop them,” Jared said. The kid was an optimist, I had to give him that. “We stopped them two times before. I’m sure we could do it again.”
“Kid, there are three to four times as many people in the main group,” I said. “They are probably all armed and I’m sure won’t be too happy about us trying to stop them. Besides, how the hell would we even get out of here to stop them? I’m sorry, Jared, but this is Heathway’s problem. He made this mess and he’ll have to clean it up.”
“But if they get there and take over, it’ll be gone,” Jared argued.
“What will be gone?” I asked.
“Our chance,” Danni cut in. “Lucas, if they take over or destroy Heathway’s settlement, we’ll have nowhere else to go. We’ll be stuck.”
“We are stuck,” I snapped. “We’re stuck in here with a shit ton of husks on the other side of the door – all waiting to make us dinner. And you heard what Heathway said – the husks aren’t rotting. The radioactivity or something has preserved them like beef jerky. I thought we could wait them out, but we can’t. All we can wait for now is to run out of food. I’m sorry, but it’s over. Heathway is screwed and so are we.”
“What about your wife and daughter?” Jared asked. His question blindsided me like a sucker punch. I shook my head, but Jared’s question refused to stop echoing in my mind.
“What about them?” I asked with more intensity than I intended. Jared stumbled back a few steps and held his hands up.
“I was just saying,” Jared continued, “that if we’re stuck in here, how are you going to see them again? That’s what you wanted, right? Ever since you got out of jail, all you’ve been talking about is seeing them again. And now you’re suddenly going to give up on that? How are you going to do that locked in here?”
“Jared, stop it,” Danni admonished him. “Don’t talk about Lucas’ family. It’s not our business.”
“I’m not saying it to be a jerk,” Jared protested. “It’s the truth, though.”
“Jared, that’s enough,” Danni’s voice seemed shrill and pointed as it echoed in the small bunker. “Lucas, I’m sorry. Jared doesn’t know what he’s saying. You’ve done nothing but help us ever since this started.”
“It’s okay,” I muttered. “He’s right.”
I leaned forward and rested my head on the table, hoping that a change of angle might loosen some idea in my mind. I pictured my thoughts moving through my head like one of those blue wave machines that shrinks always seemed to have on their desks.
Something rattled loose and bounced through my mind like a pinball. It was a bad idea, probably one of the worst ones I had ever had, but it was also the only one I could think of. I would do whatever it took to see Lisa and Kara again, even if I might die doing it.