Life Among The Dead (8 page)

The child is lying on the bed, crying inconsolably. The soldier looks under it.
No shells. Not even a dust bunny.
He thinks to ask the girl where they might be, but she is far too distraught at the moment. He scans the room for another possible hiding place, there is no other furniture. He sees two windows and another door next to the closet.
Probably a bathroom,
Dan reasons.
Would they store the ammo in there? Probably not, however I need to be sure.

The door to the alleged bathroom is lightweight and flimsy. As his hand reaches for the brass knob a crash on the other side of it halts him. Placing his ear to the cheap wood he can hear shuffling.

“
Connects to the hall.” Dan thinks aloud. “It connects, and they are now in there.” His thoughts go silent as he listens to the occupants of the bathroom. The only thing between them is this thin, fragile door. The soldier locks the knob. The shiny orb shakes as he turns the bolt. He doesn’t put much confidence in it being able to hold them back for long.

On the adjoining wall to the right of the door is a window. Dan throws it open. The window overlooks the backyard. He was hoping for a drainpipe, or some sort of lattice. What he gets instead is a small porch.

“
It’ll have to do.” He concedes, turning towards the bed. He snatches the girl from the mattress and brings her to the window. She continues to cry as he slides her passed the sill and on to the wooden platform. Dan drops the useless shotgun before exiting himself. Once outside he reaches into the room and moves the curtains back into place and shuts the window.

Inside the house the bathroom door crashes open. The girl’s eyes go wide when she hears them. Dan makes contact with her tear-glazed eyes and puts a finger to his lips. She nods in acknowledgement. The fresh air seems to be calming her down.

The porch they stand on is rough and unfinished. Dan suspects it was added as an afterthought considering the difficult accessibility. A busy man’s project left undone. The craftsmanship isn’t the greatest. The boards are uneven and the nails stick out of the wood at weird angles.

Dan looks up. He thinks he can reach the roof if he stands on the railing. He gestures to his companion by pointing a finger up to the sky. She just stares at him blankly.
She’ll get it,
Dan tells himself as he steps on top of the rail.

The unsteady structure wobbles beneath his feet. He has to hold onto the wall for balance. With one hand he reaches up and grabs onto the edge of the roof. The other arm joins the first and he pulls himself up, his feet walk along the wall. When his shoulders crest the top he is able to swing a leg over and slowly wiggle his way onto the slanted surface.

He lies prone looking down at the girl. She has a disbelieving and bewildered look on her face. Dan un-slings his rifle and unfastens one side of the weapon’s nylon strap to lower down to the child. She stares at the black synthetic band and then to the man on top of her house. The look she gives him asks if he’s crazy. He wants to offer her verbal encouragement, but can’t risk giving away their location. All he can do is nod and try to prod her along by widening his eyes, mouthing the words ‘grab it’. He tries to will her into taking the strap.

The adolescent takes hold of the lifeline and wraps it around her right hand, the left grabs above the other. Dan pulls with all his might. His first attempt almost takes him off the roof. He had pulled too fast and realizes now he has to go slower.

Inch by inch he raises her from the splintery wood. The higher she gets the harder it is to remain on his perch. She kicks her dangling legs causing her weight to shift. She is trying to find the wall. Her desperate flailing limbs want something solid underneath them. One of her bare feet strikes the window, invoking a yelp of pain. Dan knows where this is going to lead, he is just happy she hasn’t let go. He pulls her up to the edge.

The curtains have been parted and the little girl can now see into the room from where she hangs. She screams at the faces of the dead that watch her with an eerie fixation.

“
Shit!” Dan says. She is only a few inches away from the top. “Grab on.” He instructs her, no longer concerned about being quiet. He needs to get her back on task, and not staring into the window.

She looks up and sees Dan’s outstretched hand. She reaches for it. Hand in hand Dan groans as he starts to haul her up.

The window explodes outward from the weight of the dead pressed against it. They lean out the open portal, caught at their waists. The ghouls twist and turn trying to grab the legs that tease them from above.

The soldier has the girl halfway to safety. She still clings to the strap with one hand as her rescuer hauls her up completely like an angler bringing in a fish.

He looks down at the relentless reanimated people. They are entangled with one another as they try to crawl out onto the porch in pursuit of their lunch. The hungry corpses look up at Dan and reach out to grab him. More and more exit the house onto the shoddy deck. The wooden structure creaks under their combined weight. Despite the obvious signs of danger more still join the others, crowding onto the tired old porch.

The weathered deck inevitably releases its weak grip on the house and plummets to the yard below taking with it its decaying occupants. The mass of them strikes the earth and their bodies are scattered like broken dolls. The already deceased accident victims immediately start to rise to their feet, ignoring any broken bones sustained in the fall.

The zombies in the bedroom continue to exit through the window even with no porch. They are greeted by gravity and join the others below. Dan has to laugh at their stupidity, he watches the dim-witted zombies fall to the lawn one after the other. None of them learning from the previous one’s mistake.

He looks to the girl to see if she is watching the comic cavalcade unfold, the Keystone Korpses bungling below. She doesn’t see the humor in it. Her eyes are wide and stare at some far off spot. She just lost her entire family today and is scared. Dan crawls to her.

The soldier takes one of her hands that are firmly planted to the shingles. He guides her to the house’s peak. At the summit he gets her to cling to a brick chimney. He removes his flak jacket and lays it down close to the masonry work.

“
Here. Sit on this.” He offers. The girl lifts herself enough for him to slide the thick vest under her rear end.
My flak should be more comfortable,
he thinks. The asphalt shingles are rough with sharp edges, and despite the time of year their black color is making them very hot under the sun. The heat is visible, radiating in wavy lines around the edges of the roof.

“
I’m Dan.” The soldier tells the frightened child extending his hand.

“
Barbara.” She replies simply. She lets go of the chimney with one hand just long enough to shake his before quickly returning it to the stone.

“
Hungry?” He asks while offering her a piece of beef jerky. She just shakes her head and stares into the distance.

Dan sits down on the incline and lights a cigarette. He looks out onto the suburban street below. To the left he can see the park he had run through before coming to west 8th, and beyond that is the city of Waterloo. He had been trying to get home, but the dead kept popping up, forcing him to change his course as if corralling him here, and driving him further from his wife.

He gazes right and sees the neighborhood comes to an end less than a dozen houses down in a circle of asphalt.
A cul de sac?
He thinks.
I sought refuge on a dead end street? Shmuck.
He shakes his head. Just beyond the final house he can see the levy and the Charles River. The river runs past miles of streets just like this one.

So many houses,
he thinks.
How many people are alive out there? How many not so fortunate?
Below the survivors Dan sees hundreds of unfortunates that clog the burb. Zombies surround the house they sit upon, stranded on an asphalt island in a sea of the dead.

12

Alone in the dark. Becka sits with her knees to her chest, shivering though the air continues to get uncomfortably hotter and hotter. She had wept while Stevie screamed for her to help him. His awful pleas went unanswered. She wept even harder when his screaming stopped and the ghouls below continued to feast on him. She could hear the wet sounds of it. They seemed to take more time with Stevie then they had with Derek.

She is silent now as she listens to their feet pacing the creaky floorboards. Large drops of sweat leave the tip of her nose with the regularity of a leaking faucet. In her head she recites three words.
I had to. I had to.

Her only companion now is their moaning. She has been listening to their pitiful sounds for what seems like forever. Time has no meaning up here. She has her head to her knees just listening to the intruders wail and creak in the hall.

The moaning is subsiding. Becka picks her head up from its resting place and believes she can hear them on the stairs. She believes they may be leaving. The friendless cheerleader waits. She stays as still as can be until she no longer hears the creaking floor and the moans become barely audible before she creeps through the insulation to the hatch above the hall.

The hall is empty. She cranes her neck down the opening for a better look being careful to avoid jagged boards and stray nails. The air below feels 20 degrees cooler, she breathes it in deeply trying to alleviate the suffocating feeling the crawlspace gives her. From her point of view they seem to be gone. The relief she feels is fleeting. She knows she has to check the bedroom, the thought of that makes her stomach cramp.

Slowly she allows the bedroom to come into view as she stalks towards it. Stevie is down there. She sees his body, half naked from the waist down. He had landed on one of the bedposts. The sharp wooden stake pierced his body just below the ribs, running him through. Becka lets out a ragged sound of horror as all the air leaves her lungs. Her hand goes to her mouth in an attempt to stifle any crying, or words pleading for the boy’s forgiveness. Her eyes are unblinking as they take in what she had done. She pushed him, stabbed that post into his side. She allowed those things to eat him.

Flesh has been torn from his bones that glisten white. The once tan bedspread is drenched red. She can’t look anymore. She forces herself away from the hole. The girl’s head swoons. She wants out of this attic. Out of this house. Out of the reach of those things. She moves through the well-trampled fluff back to the hatch.

This square hatch, the hole, and the crawlspace are what her world has been reduced to. She places a hand on either side of the opening and begins to lower herself down. She hangs there for a few seconds as she builds up her courage. Her legs swing slightly in the cooler air. About to drop she has to cling a little longer. Crunching sounds are coming from down stairs, broken glass being walked on.

Her fingers strain to keep her suspended. She attempts to pull herself back up into the safety of familiar darkness, but she can’t summon the strength. Her arms shake as the cheerleader’s foot finds the wall in hopes that it will help her climb. Glass crunches again.

Becka frantically wants to get back into her crawlspace, her sweaty hands betray her. Her fingers lose their grip on the wood and she falls.

She lands on her back with a thud. The stunned girl lies there, waiting to hear if the stairs creak from zombies coming to claim her. She waits, but hears nothing. Not even the sound of the glass.

Slowly Becka sits up and turns to look down the stairs. There’s no movement. Ignoring the pain in her back she stands. She knows this house well. Besides the master bedroom there is a bathroom and a smaller bedroom, Billy’s room. Billy is Derek’s older brother. He’s a weird one, the loner type, who dresses all in black, reads conspiracy books, and is into the martial arts. She reads a sign on Billy’s door: Keep out.

Becka walks to the door despite the prominent cautionary signage. She moves slow, not wanting to make too much noise on the whiny floor. Every step makes a sound as the old boards below the carpet rub together. She puts her hand on the knob praying it is unlocked. She knows inside this room she will find a weapon of some sort.

The knob turns in her hand and she looks in. She can’t help being overly cautious though Billy is away at college. There shouldn’t be any danger in here. Behind the stealth cheerleader a moan mournfully calls out.

Becka spins with a frightened gasp. She turns so she can face her attacker, but the hall is empty. She realizes Stevie is awake.

She backs away into the open door keeping her eyes on the master bedroom. She lays her head against the door after she closes it. Even through the wood she can hear Stevie. The sound gives her the chills, her spine shivers as his lamentation reverberates in her ears. She knows she is the reason he is one of them now.

“
No.” she tells herself. “You had to do it.”

She wants to snap out of it and be herself again. If she wants to get through this she will have to fake it. Fake it like she did at school. Fake it like her cheerleading. Fake it like she had faked it with all her jock boyfriends. She decides she will have to pretend that she is something else in order to survive. She will just be Becka.

“
I’m good at that.” She sighs opening her eyes. Her body is trembling with pent up tension. She takes a few deep breaths trying to calm down. Her brain slowly registers that she is currently staring at a giant breast.