“I was a fireman.” Richard smiled, absently, as though lost in reminiscence. “I’ve saved lives. My girls were so proud of me.”
“Let’s hear your story now, Richard.”
Richard used his sleeve to rid his face of sweat. “There’s no time.”
“Richard, there’s nothing but time. Maybe I could learn a few things from your experience out there. I think you owe us that much.”
“There’s no time. I can use that glass of water now.” He wiped his face again. For a second, his eyes rolled back. “It’d be a bad idea to stay here, Lawrence. You can’t stay in here forever.”
Lawrence grabbed the pistol from his pants brim, and without a thought, he aimed, pulled the trigger, and blasted a hole in Richard’s head.
2
Turning Point
Lawrence
Three
months ago, Lawrence and Kyle had snuck out the house after midnight.
It was Kyle’s idea to head to the end of Revel Street to Ian David’s house. Kyle believed that the dead things were less aggressive at night. It wasn’t an assumption Lawrence agreed with.
Kyle’s plan came to him after viewing the neighborhood from the upstairs window. Ian, dressed to the nines, always so debonair in his suits and ties, was squatted down across the street, gorging on a dead cat.
Ian David was a lawyer. To Kyle and Lawrence, he was an acquaintance who they had frequently encountered in parties. Ian always dressed in suits and always proudly said some Italian name when one complimented his attire. Ian probably slept in suits, for all Lawrence knew, probably showered in his suits, and probably fucked coked-up hookers and furry animals in his suits. No one liked the guy. He’d talk about his career and lifestyle to anyone who had ears, but no one cared. No one cared that he owned a five-bedroom house on Revel Street. No one cared about his expensive cologne, because it smelled like citrus fruits melting in a barrel of acid.
Once, at a lounge, a drunk and apprehensive Ian David confided in Kyle, Lawrence, and Tristan. Ian had been buying their rounds that night, and the three thought it’d be courteous to listen to his bullshit.
“They’re after me,” Ian had said. “I’m afraid they’ll find me soon. I had to buy three guns last month. I keep one in the kitchen, one in my office, and one under my bed. I shouldn’t have to live like this. Maybe I’ll move to another state.”
Lawrence didn’t know Ian’s situation, but he felt scared for the guy. Maybe Ian was a paranoid druggy or had fucked with the wrong people.
That didn’t matter anymore. Ian David was somewhat dead now and literally eating pussy across the street.
Kyle wanted to acquire the three guns from Ian’s house, seeing that Ian didn’t have use for them, but most of the housemates were against the plan. Sonya had said, “It’s not worth it, the guns might not even be there.” Ally and Kasey had strongly agreed. Ally pleaded with Kyle to forget the idea. The only ones on Kyle’s side were Lawrence and Miles.
And so, Kyle and Lawrence went against the majority and left the house once everyone slept. Lawrence brought along an axe, and Kyle’s weapon, a hammer with a scissor blade tied to the head with twine. They traveled stealthily and swiftly down the street, though they heard several moans echo in the darkness, they encountered no predicaments with the dead. That was luck. They reached Ian David’s house where there was no need to break a window. The front door was unlocked. More luck.
With small keychain flashlights, they rummaged through kitchen cupboards and cabinets, taking whatever food and stuffing them into their packs. No sign of a gun.
Next, they searched the downstairs room, which was presumably the office. The pistol was in the first place Lawrence looked, in the computer desk cabinet. Kyle and Lawrence rejoiced with a fist bump and an exchange of brotherly shoulder punching.
They immediately moved upstairs to the largest room at the end of the hall. Kyle opened the door and scanned the room slowly with his keychain light. Lawrence never forgot how Kyle’s jaw slowly dropped when his light stopped on the face of a young boy kneeling upon the bed, greedily cramming slimy, shapeless pulps into his mouth. Dark red globs trickled down the kid’s cheeks and chin. Beneath the boy was another boy, laid out with torso opened from pelvis to chest, insides mangled and organs unrecognizable. What added much horror to the sight was that the boys, both predator and prey, had identical faces (the dreadful ending of these preteen brothers still troubled Lawrence’s sleep).
The living dead twin, Brother-eater, spotted Kyle and sprang to his feet, dropped whatever parts of his twin he was holding, and leapt at Kyle.
Kyle screamed and blindly swung his crude weapon. The scissor blade caught Brother-eater’s chin. Brother-eater dropped to the carpet. Kyle let out a frustrated cry and swung his modified hammer downward on the dead thing’s head…again…and a third time. The dimness of the room spared Lawrence from the sight of gore, but the sound of a skull shattering was enough to make him want to retch up his dinner of cocktail sausages and green beans, but he kept it in.
“
Fuck
,” Kyle quietly hissed. “Let’s find the gun and get the fuck out of here.”
Lawrence could only mouth the word “okay” as his throat fought back the insides of his stomach.
Kyle re-shined his light, dropped to his knees, and began his search under the bed.
Lawrence searched the drawers of the dresser.
Kyle got to his feet. “It’s not under there.” He went for the closet and opened the sliding door. He yelped, alarmingly. A full scream followed, and then a dull thud.
“Kyle?” Lawrence shouted. He looked up from his drawer search and aimed his light at the closet.
Kyle was on the floor against the bed, his right hand grasping his left shoulder. Another dead thing stood within a row of hanging suit coats, chained and bound from its shoulders to its knees. This one was an older boy who resembled the twins. It growled and shook its head in a rapid side to side motion, snapping bites at the air. Fresh blood was on its lips.
“No.” Lawrence threw down his keychain light to get two hands gripped on the axe. What came after was a blur. It was like passing out after countless swigs of hard liquor and awakening on the bathroom floor the next day. All he remembered was the brief thought
Kyle is done
.
When he regained awareness, his hands were sticky on the axe handle and the suit coats before him were sopping with blood.
“It got me, Lawrence.” Kyle rose from the floor and rested upon the edge of the bed. He sat where moonlight shined in through the window, and Lawrence saw that Kyle wasn’t terrified nor worried, just blank and defeated. “It got me. I’m already dead.”
Lawrence only stared at his friend. He knew Kyle was right.
“Kasey said it took Darren about a day, but…” Kyle trailed off. He examined the blood on his right palm. “I’m already starting to feel it. It’s fucking cold, but I’m sweating like shit right now. It’s fucking cold.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s fucking cold.”
Lawrence drew Ian’s office gun from his belt. “Do you need me to do it?”
“Not with that,” Kyle gestured to the axe. “Use that instead. A gunshot will alert those things outside. A bunch of them will come after you.”
“I can’t do that. Gun’s quicker, more accurate.”
“I know, but you have to make it back to the house. Please make it back.” Kyle’s eyes rolled back, pupils disappeared behind his upper eyelids. He let out a muffled moan, which sounded like a suppressed cry of pain. “Please protect Ally. Please don’t let anything happen to Ally. Tell Sonya I’m sorry.”
Lawrence nodded. He accepted defeat as Kyle did. Crying for him would be pointless. “I will.”
“Make it quick,” Kyle closed his eyes and lowered his head. “And please don’t botch the fucking thing, because I’ll feel it.” He abruptly cried out and clutched himself tightly, as though to warm himself from a sudden chill. The cry became a familiar, inhuman growl. His head lifted and his eyes sprang open.
Lawrence chose the gun. He aimed and fired.
Gun’s quicker, more accurate.
Lawrence stared down at the hole in Richard’s forehead.
He was turning.
Lawrence’s uncertainty made him queasy, made the room around him spin, made his heart feel as though it were being squeezed and about to burst inside him.
I know he was turning. He had to be turning.
Richard showed the same symptoms as Kyle, in the constant sweating and the eyes rolling back.
He had to be turning
, Lawrence continued to convince himself.
That’s why he wanted to speak to me alone. That’s why he kept saying, “There’s no time.” Even Richard knew he was turning.
Richard hadn’t officially turned. Lawrence had panicked and reacted. The turn was like flipping a switch, based on what Lawrence knew, one moment the victim was sweating, the next, the victim starts making nasty gurgling noises and tries to eat your face. If Richard wasn’t turning, then Lawrence would be a murderer and an idiotic moron.
There were screams downstairs. Everyone had heard the gunshot. “Shit,” Lawrence said, hearing the quick rhythm of footsteps moving up the stairs. “Here they come, Lawrence, you stupid fuck.”
And here comes some more screams
.
Ally was first through the bedroom door. She saw what was on the bed, cupped her mouth in both hands, and screamed.
Charlene followed, saw Richard, and shrieked. No, she didn’t bother covering
her
mouth.
Every scream made Lawrence cringe. It was like anticipating a punch in the stomach. Therese and Joni entered the room.
You’re fucked now, Lawrence.
“No, no.” Therese gripped strands of her hair and shook her head. “NO! RICHARD!” Then the tears came pouring.
Joni made no reaction. There was eeriness in her silence, which made Lawrence sick with guilt. She back stepped out of the room.
“He turned,” Lawrence said.
I think
. “He turned. I had to do it. I’m sorry.”
Kasey came in and took Therese by the shoulders. “You don’t need to see him like this,” Kasey consoled the crying woman. “It had to be done. You know that.”
“No,” Therese shouted, “he wasn’t bitten, he wasn’t. He wasn’t bitten!” She continued her hysterics. Kasey and Ally led her out the door.
Just as they led Therese out, Sonya came in.
Aw, fuck me,
Lawrence thought.
I’m in no mood, Sonya.
Sonya didn’t scream, but only winced mildly and covered her mouth.
“Yeah,” said Lawrence, “I know, I know.” He braced himself for a bombardment of cussing and scolding, and some creatively, horrendous name-calling.
“Are you okay, Lawrence?” Sonya said.
Nope
. Lawrence thought she’d take the opportunity to yell at him and call him a
fucking idiot
or any other variations of a
fucking idiot
. “Yeah. I just need to…I’m okay.”
Tristan and Miles entered.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Miles.
“Lawrence…what the fuck?” said Tristan. “You…uh…shot him in the head, dude.”
Lawrence could still hear Therese’s distressed cries from down stairs. “Richard! RICHARD!” she went on.
“You guys,” Lawrence said, “please go away. Just go away for a minute.”
Miles and Sonya complied. Both stepped out of the room.
“Okay,” said Charlene, “I’m going now, too, bye.” She exited.
“Tristan, wait,” said Lawrence, “help me out here, please.”
“Oh, okay.” Though Tristan’s small glances toward the bedroom doorway indicated his desire to leave. “Sure, I’ll help you, man. You just got to promise not to shoot
me
in the head.”
“No promises. Can you close the door?” Lawrence had known Tristan since third grade, and out of everyone in the house, he trusted Tristan the most.
Tristan shut the door. “All right, so are we gonna toss this bastard out the window or what?”
“You have to help me find the bite,” Lawrence whispered.
“Uh…Say what?”
“I wasn’t sure if he was turning.”
“Uh…That’s fucked up, man.”
“You have to help me find the bite, come on, I need proof. We need to find it.”
Tristan took steps closer to the body. “What if we don’t find the bite?”
“I don’t know. That girl Therese might become a complete psycho and slash my throat while I sleep—or the kid, the kid might do it. I just killed her dad, and that’s got to be traumatic to the innocent child psyche.”
“Let’s just throw him out the window now. That woman and the kid are gonna have to rely on your word if they wanna stay here.”
Lawrence got started and unzipped Richards fishing vest. “Just help me do this.”
Ally
Ally watched Therese weep. Her daughter Joni sat with her on the living room couch. Little Joni seemed calm, yet an air of sorrow remained. The young girl must’ve ran out of tears. Ally knew the feeling.
Ally’s family was gone now. All dead.
Ally could still hear those monsters grunting and banging on the wooden boards outside. Therese and Joni didn’t appear troubled by the sounds anymore. It had taken Ally days to adjust to the noises and to realize that the house’s defenses were solid against unrelenting threats. It was Lawrence’s idea to board up the windows on the outside as well as the inside. The dead things lacked the logic and strength to pull apart the barriers covering the windows. Lawrence was the reason why everyone in the house was safe. He was a selfless person, willing to risk his life for any of them. He had proved it when he went to find the guns at Ian David’s house. Ally loved him for it. She loved him deeply.