Jane picked up another knife for the hand that had previously held the fork. She didn’t know what to do next. Should she try to kill Vicky? Was Vicky still alive? And what the hell was that smell?
The knob began to shake, and the door rattled on its hinges.
“Don’t come in here,” Jane yelled, trembling. “Don’t you dare. I’m late for work and you’re making such a mess. I’m not gonna clean all of this up, that’s for sure.”
Jane looked at the Viognier, shrugged, and downed the last of it. Why not?
Then, with a rattle and the sharp splintering of wood, the door came off its hinges.
At first, Vicky tried to push past the dislodged door while it was still in front of her, jammed between her and the wine refrigerator. That wasn’t working, and after too short a time, seemingly by trial and error, Vicky staggered backward, letting the door fall outward, away from its frame, and away from the wine refrigerator.
Then Vicky reversed, lurching forward again, and shambled straight into the wine refrigerator. It was as if she didn’t see it in front of her. She bumped into it, backed up, and then tried to walk through it again, repeating the process.
“Now look what you’ve done with the door,” Jane said, brandishing the knives at face level. “Stop it, or I’m gonna cut you, I’m not kidding this time. It’ll be worse than that fork sticking out of you.”
Jane pointed a knife-wielding hand to the fork sticking out of Vicky’s shoulder.
“I’m gonna cut you right in the face.”
Vicky walked into the wine refrigerator again, and she was getting the hang of it. Each time she walked into it now, she edged it a little out of position. A path was opening up through which she would soon be able to stagger.
“Now don’t you come in here,” Jane said. “I’m warning you.”
Jane ran up to the wine refrigerator and pushed it back into position while Vicky was backing up from a bump against it. Vicky reached out and tried to grab Jane, but Vicky was too slow and awkward in her movements. Jane sidestepped out of the way and swiped at Vicky’s outstretched arm with a knife. It put a gash down the length of Vicky’s forearm. Vicky didn’t react, and no blood came out of the gash.
Vicky reached for Jane again. Jane backed up now, and began to look for a way out. Could she get around Vicky? It didn’t look that way. Vicky was slow-moving enough, but the space was too small to get around her without getting grabbed, and if there was one thing Jane wanted to avoid, it was Vicky’s grip and slobbery, diseased mouth—although the mouth looked much drier now than it had before...not that a dry mouth meant Jane was into it, of course. Vicky was trying to bite her, of all things. The gall of some people!
She and Vicky weren’t working out as roommates anyway, Jane thought, and wished there was a man around to help, someone bigger than Vicky.
Jane gave the empty Viognier bottle a sad look, picked it up, and threw it at Vicky’s head.
“Take that you beast,” Jane said.
The bottom of the bottle made a nice thunk against Vicky’s forehead. Jane was proud of the throw. I should’ve kept up with my softball team, she thought, and then wished there was a bat that she could swing at Vicky’s head. She gave a quick thought to retrieving another wine bottle and swinging that, but decided it was better to avoid getting too close to the wine refrigerator, where Vicky was now doggedly stumbling back and forth, intractable in her pursuit of Jane.
Jane backed yet deeper into the kitchen. She turned to the window, and saw her way out.
25
Lorie tried to shake off her sudden disorientation. She felt off-balance, like she was about to fall over, like the feeling she got when she stopped too suddenly after a sprint, only worse. She instinctively backed away from the entrance into the living room, bumping into Evan.
“Hey,” Evan said, “watch it.”
Lorie felt better at once. “There’s a weird smell in there, like...” but Lorie found that she didn’t know how to describe it. “I wouldn’t breathe in if I were you.” Lorie didn’t want to breathe it either, but she thought her mom might have been hurt, so she had to see what was the matter.
She pinched her nose, stared at Evan until he rolled his eyes and did the same, and walked into the living room. Two of the lamps by the sofa, one an antique, were smashed to bits on the wood floor.
Lorie felt a stab of regret on seeing the broken antique lamp. It had been her grandmother’s, and her grandmother had always tried to keep her from playing with the patterned beads that hung from the lampshade. But they had been fun to play with, and made a fun jangling sound when—
Then Lorie saw her mom, and immediately forgot her grief over the ruined lamp.
26
But it wasn’t that easy.
Jane pulled and pushed on it, but the damn window just wouldn’t open far enough for her to get out. It was hard to reach to begin with, being positioned above and behind the sink, and even when Jane climbed into the sink, she couldn’t get enough leverage to budge the old, stubborn thing open wide enough.
Deciding on an alternate course of action, Jane climbed out of her perch in the sink, and took out a heavy cast iron pan from under one of the counters by the stove. She swung the pan at the glass. The pane cracked and broke, but not completely, so Jane kept swinging at it. As Jane beat on the window with the pan, the wooden cross-hatchings on the window began to crack along with the glass, and Jane knew that given just a little more time to work on the window, she would be able to break out and escape.
But time wasn’t forthcoming. Jane heard a scrape, and turned to see that Vicky was now in the kitchen, having pushed past the wine refrigerator.
Jane reached for a knife with her non-pan hand, just as Vicky—much more deftly than before—grabbed for Jane’s reaching hand.
Vicky’s fingers closed over Jane’s wrist just as Jane’s fingers closed over the knife’s handle. With a strength that startled Jane, Vicky began to pull Jane’s hand up, toward her dry, gaping mouth, toward cracked, broken lips that resembled the lips of a person who had just come crawling out of the desert, lips too dry to bleed.
“Let go of me!” Jane screamed, struggling against Vicky’s grip.
Jane’s mind began to flutter off somewhere as she looked into Vicky’s eyes, as she couldn’t help but stare into them, powerless to resist the cold feeling that now washed over her.
No escape.
No way out.
She began to scream, and barely heard her own voice.
27
Milt took a few puffs of his inhaler, then picked up the empty Coca-Cola bottle and held it in front of his belly like a shield. He gulped down some aromatic, battle station air, then belched in fright.
He had read enough comic books and played enough video games to know exactly what he was looking at right now. It was a zombie—one of the walking dead.
Milt wondered for a moment if the zombie had walked into the store that way, and if he had been too preoccupied with procuring the Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael to notice.
No, Milt thought, I certainly would have noticed a zombie walking into the store, wouldn’t I have? Milt thought it was more likely that the zombie had walked in as a man, and transformed into a zombie while browsing the store. That meant that there was a zombie virus running amok, and—wait a second, zombies? There was no such thing as zombies, this was just some idiot troublemaker trying to scare Milt—probably the landlord’s costumed agent. Milt was well aware of his landlord’s contempt for Milt and the comic book store, and this was just the kind of thing his landlord might do to try to intimidate Milt into leaving.
“I am afraid your crass tactics are not going to have any effect on me,” Milt said, fury filling his fat cheeks as he spoke. “You and that villain Mr. Trevena are going to have to compensate me for all of this damage. And let it be known that I shall never leave this place. It suits my temperament quite perfectly.”
The man in the zombie disguise moaned in response.
“Are you listening to me, you ruffian? Answer me! Are you unable to formulate a rejoinder on account of your trifling wit? Perhaps a higher concentration of mono-syllabic words is in order. I will not leave here. And that is a poor mask. Mr. Trevena would have made a better zombie au naturel than you do in your absurd makeup and thrift shop attire.”
Apparently, a rejoinder did occur to the man—part of his lower jaw fell off. It landed on the carpet and bounced twice before sputtering to a stop by Milt’s bursting furry slippers, which were straining admirably against the pudgy girth of Milt’s feet.
Milt reexamined the man’s mask and observed bite marks on the man’s face and neck. There were chunks of flesh missing, and with the piece of lower jaw now missing, Milt could see the man’s tongue hanging out and askew, raw bone and jaw muscle peeking out from behind it.
Milt considered this for a moment.
So it was not a mask. Milt’s mind found itself struggling for purchase, as his body put forth a commendable, though unattainable effort to recruit muscle fibers—
any
muscle fibers—into action for immediate flight from this obvious predator.
Milt had to do something quick, or the zombie was going to get him. It was lurching toward the battle station, getting closer with each rigid spasm of its legs. Miltimore the Sword-Wielder would know what to do, and in a timid, unbelieving sort of way, Milt knew what he had to do too.
A karate yell flew from Milt’s mouth.
It had no effect on the approaching zombie, so Milt struggled to his feet and lumbered his great body around to face the wall behind his battle station. From it, his shaky hands pulled his replica, 39 inch Conan the Barbarian Sword of Crom, which he had modified to resemble Miltimore the Sword-Wielder’s sword by coloring the hilt black and darkening the blade with charcoal, so it looked more like a sword that was used, and not one that just hung around for display purposes. Milt figured that Miltimore the Sword-Wielder used his sword, and its gleam would have dulled over time by way of contact with blood, bone, sinew, gristle, wine, women, and the countless other adventuring objects that Milt’s replica sword was never to encounter…until now.
The sword looked authentic, and it felt that way too. It was heavy, and it was a product of sound planning that Milt took care to eat well, or he might have more difficulty wielding the sword than he already did.
As the zombie approached, a quick realization dawned on Milt. For years, he had made a ritual of sharpening the sword with stones. He did this while he watched the Conan movies and polished off Snickers ice cream bars, usually as a reward for another glorious life conquest—in the virtual world. The last time Milt had done this was last month, when he set the record for the longest
World of Warcraft
continuous playing session at eighteen days, four hours, thirty-two minutes, and seven seconds. When Milt had woken up at his battle station two days later and realized the enormity of his accomplishment, he took his sword down into the basement, popped in the first of the Conan movies, got out his sharpening stones and ice cream, and set to work.
Now he knew there had been a reason for all of that. All the while, he had been preparing for this moment, for this day. The monster had leapt off the comic book page to confront Milt, and Milt was ready.
Milt raised the sword in front of his body in a shaky, awkward jiggling of arms. The zombie reacted to Milt’s sword-brandishing by moaning and hastening its stumble toward the battle station, its ruined jaw gyrating sideways, click-clacking as it swiveled.