Eventually the men stopped arguing and turned to Nancy. The looks on their faces confirmed that they expected her to make the final decision.
“No pressure, hmm?” she muttered. She looked down at Sarah, who was examining a bottle Nancy had emptied and cleaned for her. She found herself welling with stress. The men were expecting her to make the decisions for the group, and her decisions greatly affected this little child who couldn’t vote for herself. Knowing that made it so much harder to decide which was the more logical course. Her instinct was to keep the baby warm and fed and moderately safe here in this building. Her common sense told her that she could only keep her fed as long as the food held out. She didn’t know much about survival statistics, but she was confident that a baby wouldn’t last anywhere near as long without food as the adults might.
“Give me the night,” Nancy finally said. “I’ll give you my decision in the morning.”
Ken and Greg sighed visibly, but nodded. Neither wanted to press the matter.
That evening Nancy huddled against the wall in the examination room, staring out at the gap in the window. Sarah was nuzzled up against her chest. The strange woman was still outside, still a silent sentinel waiting for...what? That was the real question: what was she doing up there? Should her presence be the least of their concerns or the greatest? These were the thoughts that lulled her to sleep and filled her mind with nightmares.
Chapter Twelve
It started as another dream. Nancy was staring out the window at the mysterious, never-moving woman. The woman was staring back at her. Her gaze never broke, never so much as twitched, and it unsettled Nancy in a way that she couldn’t describe. What unsettled her more was when she opened her eyes and realized that it wasn’t a dream at all.
Sarah was gurgling happily, leaning out of Nancy’s arms to press her face up against the little gap of window. The woman on the apartment building, while still in her original pose, had moved her head just enough to be staring directly back at the baby. Her stare freaked Nancy out enough to cause her to jump back in alarm, pulling the baby away from the window and sending them both stumbling across the room. Sarah immediately began to wail. Nancy’s heart hammered like a drum.
Ken and Greg came running when they heard the noise.
“What’s wrong?” Ken demanded.
“The window,” Nancy replied. Her shoulders were shaking. She detached one hand from the wailing baby long enough to point. “She’s...she was
looking
at us.”
Ken crept over to the window and peered through as inconspicuously as he could. His eyes went wide and he pulled back. “You’re right. She’s staring a hole right through this room.”
Greg’s eye twitched. “We were looking at her all the time, earlier,” he muttered. “Why is she suddenly noticing us now?”
“The baby,” Nancy blurted out. She felt stupid saying it out loud, but it was the first thing that had come to her head. “While I was asleep the baby wiggled out of my arms and was looking out the window. I think, maybe, it’s
Sarah
that the woman is looking at.”
Greg looked disbelieving and Ken simply frowned. They stood in silence - all but Sarah, who was still sniffling - contemplating this strange new situation. Ken was about to open his mouth to speak when he was cut off by a loud
thud
that made them all jump like scared little mice.
Nancy’s eyes went wide. “What was that?”
Thud!
They jumped again. Ken turned back to the window, glanced out the gap, and stumbled backward in surprise. He tripped over the dentist’s chair and went sprawling across the floor. “Zombie!” he gasped out, pointing. “Zombie at the window!”
Nancy squeezed Sarah and she and Greg rushed over to take a look. Sure enough, there was a zombie leaning against the outside of the window, swinging his arms against it, trying to bash his way in. From around the bloodied face they could see four more hurrying toward the building, and within seconds they could hear more banging from other areas of the building.
“Was it Sarah’s crying?” Greg asked. His face was white as he stepped back from the window.
“No,” Nancy insisted immediately. “The walls and windows are too thick. They never heard her before!” Her response was partially in defense of Sarah’s innocence, but she also truly believed it. “I think it has something to do with that woman!” she insisted.
Ken’s face looked incredulous. “Nancy, that’s insane unless you think she can talk to zombies telepathically and tell them that we’re here.”
Nancy’s head began to pound as she turned her most incredulous face on Ken. “We’re surrounded by rotting, reanimated
corpses
who want to eat our flesh, and you’re hung up on the possibility of telepathy?” she squawked. Sarah began to cry again. Nancy rocked her to try to get her to calm down, though she felt like screaming herself.
Thud, thud, thud!
The banging was getting louder and multiplying. Ken took a few steps back toward the window, his shoulders sagging. “We have to go,” he said quietly.
Greg let out one short, derisive laugh. “Are you kidding?” he exclaimed. “If we weren’t going to leave earlier when they were nowhere in sight, what makes you think that we’re going to leave
now
while the building is under siege?!”
Ken whipped his head around. There was a mixture of anger and panic in his eyes. “If we don’t go now we’re going to be under more than siege!” he growled, thrusting a finger at the window.
Nancy didn’t have to look out the window to understand the problem. The zombies knew they were here now, and more and more were going to come. Soon the building would be swarmed on all sides and it would only be a matter of time before their sheer numbers allowed them to break down a door or smash through one of the windows. And by then it would be far too late to make a run for it.
“We’ve got to hurry,” Nancy admitted. The prospect terrified her. “Soon we’ll have no chance of getting to the car.”
They didn’t take another moment to argue. Within seconds they were at the front door. Greg slung several bags of food over his shoulders. Ken told him to drop it all immediately if he thought it might slow him down. Greg nodded but gripped the bags tight all the same. Nancy noticed that one of the bags had Sarah’s formula in it and silently prayed that Greg was able to get at least that one bag to the car without incident. She snuggled the baby, who was sniffling and nuzzling her face into Nancy’s shirt, and held her firmly in one arm. With the other she held her katana, ready to jab at anything that got too close. Greg readied himself to run. Ken was pushing the furniture out of the way of the door when he suddenly stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Nancy squeaked.
A strange smile had crept onto Ken’s face. “I have an idea!” he insisted, and ran off. Nancy and Greg stared after him with their mouths hanging open, but a moment later he returned, lugging a steel cylinder as long as his arm and as wide around as his leg.
“What the hell is that?” Greg inquired.
“Laughing gas!” Ken giggled maliciously. While Nancy and Greg watched, Ken used a roll of medical tape to fasten a ring of candles to the outside of the cylinder. He lit the ring of candles so that a lovely bit of flame was circling around the regulator at the top of the cylinder, then he quickly swept the rest of the furniture out of the way of the door. At the last second, just before he ripped the door open, Nancy understood.
The zombies were everywhere, surrounding the car, beating on the sides of the building, and swarming toward them in droves. Ken raised the cylinder into the air and threw it as hard as he could with the regulator facing the ground. Nancy and Greg ducked down behind the waiting room chairs as Ken slammed the door and leaped out of the way. It seemed as though time stopped for a moment, and then the explosion rocked the air around them as the regulator busted open on the pavement, allowing the gas inside to rush out to the waiting flames. The door burst back open with a gust of flame that receded as quickly as it had appeared.
“Now!” Ken yelled.
All around them was melting flesh and confusion. Ken was the first to the car - the paint job of which had been scorched on one side in the explosion - and quickly dove under the dashboard to jam wires together. Greg was right behind, tossing bags into the back seat. Nancy took up the rear, slow because of the ache in her leg; she jabbed her blade clean through the eye socket of a zombie that came wandering out of the flaming mass. She tried to pull back to attack two more zombies that were coming in from the sides, but her kill fell backward, taking her sword with it. She couldn’t risk going after it with Sarah in her arms and had no time to grieve the loss of the weapon that had served her so well all this time. Instead she leaped for the car with the zombies at her heels and Sarah shrieking in her ear.
Greg yelled as a zombie took him from the left, fire-blackened hands grasping him around the throat and ripping the skin on the sides of his face. Ken was out of the car immediately, but seemed to realize too late that he had no weapon. In a mad panic he curled his hand into a fist and punched the zombie square between the eyes. The zombie’s head, half rotted and half melted from the fire, exploded beneath Ken’s fist, sending blood and gore splattering all over both of the men. Greg almost retched, but managed to recover enough to twist his body into the car behind Ken.
“Quick!” Nancy was screaming, her voice in competition with Sarah’s wails. “Get moving before they beat their way in!”
Ken was jamming wires together madly, unable to remember the proper combination under the stress. The car was filled with the smell of burning as he shocked himself again and again.
The window next to Nancy’s head imploded. A leathery hand, knuckle bones showing through the blackened skin, reached in and snatched a fistful of her hair, pulling so hard that she thought the flesh might rip from her skull. “Help!” she shrieked. Greg ripped something out of his shoe and jumped forward. A moment later the zombie went toppling backward with the chunk of Nancy’s hair and she saw that Greg was holding a scalpel, stolen from the dental surgery equipment.
The car’s engine whined sickeningly and then suddenly roared to life. “Got it!” Ken cried in relief. “Got it! Got it!” He twisted himself into the driver’s seat. A fist came through the windshield at him. In a smooth motion that might have been equal parts reflexes and blind panic, he snatched the scalpel out of Greg’s hand and stabbed it through the eye of the zombie that was trying to crawl through the window. Greg wiggled forward and slammed both of his feet into the zombie’s face; it went sprawling over the hood of the car.
“DRIVE!” Nancy shrieked.
Ken yanked at the gear shift and slammed the pedal to the floor. The car took off as two zombies fell through the broken windshield. Ken screamed profanities that Nancy hadn’t known existed. Greg pelted cans of soup at the zombies’ heads to throw off their lunge for Ken’s face and then swung himself around again to kick them back through the window. More tried to follow the same path, but by then Ken had gotten the car moving with some speed and they were thrown back instead. For a few painfully long moments it seemed like the wall of zombies was never going to break, but then all of a sudden they were through. Mostly-clear road lay before them. Ken squealed on the breaks just in time to avoid an abandoned truck, twisted the car sideways, and took off like a madman for the highway.
As she sunk back down in her seat, trying to comfort a thoroughly distraught baby, Nancy looked back to the apartment building across the road to see that the stoic woman was still standing there, watching them drive away.
Several hours later, tired, hungry, and more than a little sore, Nancy began to wonder where the hell they were. They hadn’t come across any more towns, and Nancy didn’t recognize any of the names on the signs they drove past. Ken had ignored several off-ramps. Nancy suspected that he was scared to leave the highway, which had been mostly clear. They had passed cars in ditches, and the occasional tipped transfer truck with several demolished cars surrounding it, and they’d passed bodies - lots of bodies. But they hadn’t passed any zombies.
What they were seeing a lot of were signs of insanity beginning to plague the survivors, wherever they were hiding. On a billboard screaming the words, “What’s for Dinner?” alongside a picture of a delicious-looking pizza, someone had spray-painted the words, “YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!” in huge letters. At the site of an enormous car crash that took them several minutes to navigate through, someone had erected a large sign made from the ripped-off hood of a truck and a great deal of red paint - or was that blood? It read, simply, “Repent!”
Nancy offered to drive through the night. Ken examined her leg first - her stitches had oozed a bit during the fight - and then accepted gratefully. Greg sat in the passenger seat and insisted that he’d help keep an eye out, but he soon drifted and both men were snoring. Nancy stroked Sarah’s hair from where the baby was snuggled up on Greg’s chest. She smiled for a moment and then felt something running down her face. She realized that she was crying. She spent the next hour sobbing quietly to herself, unsure of what exactly had caused her to start, but completely unable to stop.
As darkness began to fall, Nancy began to shiver. During the escape from the dentist’s office their windshield had all but been destroyed. They’d spent the day dealing with the wind and noise that resulted from driving down the highway without a barrier in front of them, but now darkness was falling and it was getting
cold
. Soon Nancy had to slow down and blast the heat to try and balance out the wind in her face. It didn’t help enough. It wasn’t long before the men had woken from the cold and Sarah had started to whimper and try to burrow herself into Greg’s chest.
“We’ve got to take an exit,” Nancy informed them. “And try to find somewhere to spend the night.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Ken asked. He himself was shivering half to death given the state of his shirt after he’d cannibalized it for wound wrappings.
Nancy gestured toward herself. “Look at us, Ken,” she insisted. “Even if I slow down to almost nothing I’m going to end up with pneumonia driving around with no windshield in a tank top in the middle of the night. And you’ve got even less on. Not to mention that we’re starting to run out of gas again.”
“She has a point,” Greg agreed. He was rearranging Sarah so that she was under his shirt to keep her warm.
Though Ken looked like he had more to say, Nancy decided that she was going to take the lead on this one. She took the next exit she saw, down a dark road that eventually opened up into wide, empty fields. Though she stood behind her decision she soon regretted her timing because the road seemed to go on forever and lead to nothing. They were all chilled to the bone by the time a structure came into sight. Nancy drove toward it with relief and watched as the dark shadow became a sturdy-looking farmhouse and a barn. There was a large, ornate cross hanging over the front door, and a beat-up red truck sitting outside the barn.