“Step back!” She yelled at
Cliff.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Sara
cycled through the shells and punched three monster holes into the barricade.
It was enough to loosen the wall. Cliff stomped his boot into the wall and sent
it tumbling down the flight of stairs. Cliff led the way. He moved the length
of lumber and plywood up off the stairs and cleared the path to the vehicles.
A flaming zombie surprised
him at the bottom of the steps. Cliff wasn’t just a strike throwing machine on
his softball league, he was one of the homerun kings. He clutched the saw with
both hands and swung it with everything he had. The saw ripped into its torched
face. It was no Samurai sword. It didn’t possess a sharp enough edge to slice
through bone, but it demolished the zombie’s face. It caved in its ugly mug and
sent its body to the ground with a loud thud.
The parking lot was always
pretty well lit with exterior lights, but tonight with the fire raging only
fifty yards away, it was almost as bright as day.
Cliff cut down another
monster as the three humans armed with guns flanked his sides. They unleashed a
fury of lead onto the encroaching horde and opened up the area around the two
cars. Cliff popped the lock on his van and waved Tina and the girls down.
Jim unlocked the PT
Cruiser. He opened the back hatch and the two car seats fell to the ground. He
kicked them out of his way and Sara and Frank dropped off the extra duffle bags
into the back.
Sara reloaded her shotgun,
“Go get Devon. I’ll keep the lot clear!”
Tina and Cliff buckled
their children into their seats and tossed the luggage into the back of the
van.
“I’ll be right back with
Morgan!” Cliff clicked the last buckle on Brea’s belt.
“What about her wheelchair?”
Tina slammed her side door shut.
“We don’t have space for
it!” Cliff pulled his side shut and the girls were safe.
The men charged back up
the flight of stairs as Sara and Tina watched each other’s backs. They smoked any
zombie that got close.
Upstairs in the living
room, pockets of fire had begun to poke through the walls of the apartment. It
was amazing how fast it spread. The other astonishing thing was that the place
was filled with a ton of smoke, but none of the alarms had gone off. Jim and
Karen seemed to set the alarm off every time they cooked a pizza. Here was a
real life threatening fire and nothing. Not a peep.
Morgan waited for Cliff at
the front door. He swooped his arms down and around her frail little body and
hoisted her up out of the chair.
“Let’s go, Mom!” He
hustled out the front door. Morgan held her son’s neck tight and pressed her
face to his chest. He could feel her shaking. She had never held him that tight
before.
The heat in the living
room was intense. It was like walking into an oven. The smoke alarms began to
blast and that woke Devon. His eyes opened in time to see Jim and Frank racing
towards him.
“Why’s it so hot in here?
What the hell is going on?” Devon reached for Jim’s arms. The cobwebs in
Devon’s mind had cleared enough for him to comprehend what was taking place.
“God Damn! What did you dudes do to the apartment?”
“Sorry about this!” Frank
circled his arms around the young man’s legs. Jim and Frank nodded at each
other and they lifted Devon off the counter at the same time. Devon carried on
like a cat with its tail stuck in a closed door.
In the parking lot, Tina and
Sara blasted the heads off a dozen infected creepers. They weren’t the only
people racing to their cars, but they were the heaviest armed. Families fled
their homes like rats on a sinking ship. Tina had to watch as her neighbors,
who were packing nothing but steak knives and brooms, tried to escape. Their
flimsy weapons couldn’t protect them and they were quickly gobbled up by the
hungry horde. It was absolute chaos.
Sara finished off a little
twerp of a zombie. The blast of the shotgun sent its tiny chewed up body into
the side of some neighbor’s sedan. It left a smear four-feet wide on the doors
and set off the car’s alarm.
It was nearly impossible to
hear over the ear piercing alarm.
“Behind you!” Tina called
out.
Sara spun, blasted a round
into an infected skull. She counted her shots and it was empty. Sara tossed the
gun into the back of the PT Cruiser. She loved how the shotgun didn’t need
precise aiming, but hated its kick. It was like an asshole jock was playing
slug-bug and punching her in the shoulder with everything he could muster. Sara
switched to the Glock, zeroed in on the next row of zombies and popped out
their infected zombie brains with a few easy pulls of the trigger.
Cliff stomped down the
steps with Morgan in his arms, “Get in the van!” he called to his wife.
Tina put her last round of
.38 into the skull of a crawling zombie that pulled its way over to the van.
Sara finished off one full
magazine and switched to her back up. Cliff opened the van’s side door and dropped
off Morgan in the center row. A fast moving monster emerged from the darkness
behind him. It headed for the dead center of Cliff’s back. He didn’t see or
hear it. Sara took two large steps to help close the gap as she slid the mag into
the butt of her gun.
Tina saw it bearing down
on her husband, “CLI-”
He had just set Morgan
down on the seat when he felt the fingertips brush his back.
POP! POP! POP! POP!
Sara sent her
nine-millimeter rounds into the side of the zombie’s skull. The momentum of her
shots caused the dead body to change course and it crashed into the back of the
van. Cliff flinched and ducked down. The loud blast of Sara’s gun shaved off a
few years of his life. He spun around in time to see the body fall off the back
of the van and land with a thud on the asphalt.
“Holy shit!” Cliff rubbed
at his buzzed scalp. “Thank you!”
Frank and Jim descended
the last of the steps with Devon in tow.
“No worries,” Sara was
rattled, but she didn’t show it.
Cliff called across the
lot towards Jim, “I’ll follow you!” He popped open the driver’s side door.
Sara moved to open the backdoor
of the PT Cruiser.
“The place is on the other
side of 192
nd
right behind the QFC!” Jim yelled back over his
shoulder. They tried as gently as they could to place Devon down in the
backseat, but the young man was in all kinds of agony and he was letting everyone
know it. They got him set and slammed his door shut. Jim pulled the spear from
his back and tossed it into his ride. Frank let out a loud whistle and pointed
out ahead of them.
Another godforsaken horde
stood between them and their exit. The three of them stepped in front of the PT
Cruiser and opened fire. The zombies were just far enough away from the flames
that they were harder to see in the dark. They kept their guns trained on the
center mass that blocked the main way out. Frank clicked empty and he flipped
over to his second magazine. Jim and Sara clicked empty on their guns.
“Get in!” Jim bark as he
dropped his rifle off in his car and pulled his pistol. Sara raced around to
her side of the Cruiser and jumped into the back seat next to Devon.
Red seeped through the
bandage. “FUCK!” she cursed in Devon’s face.
“I know! It hurts like
hell!” He tried to keep pressure on the wound, but it hurt to touch it. Sara
didn’t have a problem putting pressure on it and she placed both hands onto the
top of his thigh. He cried out.
“Hey!” she slapped him
across the cheek to get his attention, “Man up! I don’t want you screaming in
my ear all the way there!”
Devon stopped and chewed
at his bottom lip. The slap was kind of a dick move on Sara’s part, but it
worked.
Outside the car Frank
pulled both of his Berettas once his SKS clicked empty. The two men squeezed
through all forty plus rounds and the lot was as clear as it was going to get.
Only a couple of stragglers remained. Jim would have to risk the radiator in
the PT Cruiser and make a break for it.
A pack of zombies had
surrounded the back of Cliff’s van. They punched at the windows and tried to
get at the girls. The van’s engine revved and he was ready to burn rubber.
“That’s it! Time to move!”
Frank pulled his side door open and hopped in.
Jim yanked on the door
knob and looked back at the burning building behind him.
There it goes.
Jim thought.
The apartment he hated
these last few years was about to be ravaged by an unstoppable fire, along with
all of his possessions. He was too tired and beat down by the day to mutter out
anything other than, “Fuck!”
Karen had been laying in
the bed for hours. As tired as she was she could not get her brain to turn off.
Her thoughts kept replaying the day. The fight with Steve in the apartment, the
injury to her wrist, the fact that she had left Valerie in the back of the
Dodge as she ran away. The way the gun felt in her hand as she pulled the
trigger to finish off her own mother. She brooded over where the hell Jim could
be. Karen needed a distraction. She slipped her cell out of her pocket and
swiped it on. The battery was down to sixty percent and she had left the
charger at the apartment. She tried to call Jim, but there was no getting
through. The phone said all of the circuits were busy and to try again later.
She clicked on the Facebook app. No one had made any updates in hours. Karen’s
online friends and family that stretched across the nation were all saying the
same thing.
“I can’t get anyone on the
phone at the police station! Is there a way to contact them online?”
“Please help me. I’m
trapped and my husband tried to kill me!!!”
“My son has been bit! Has
anyone heard what to do? Is there a cure???”
“No one’s answering at the
school. Did they get the kids out safely??”
Her news feed went on and
on. Every one of them were confused, panicked and facing death. This was not
helping her get to sleep. It was making it worse. She turned off the app and
then she opened her photos. Karen’s phone was full to the brim with photos and
videos. It was so full she had to constantly delete the old ones to take any
new photos. She thumbed through photo after photo of the two girls looking
adorable. There was a photo of Jim holding Valerie when she was a few months
old. It was their first time taking the baby to a restaurant. The photo brought
a smile to her face. She kept looking. There was a shot of Jim and her at a
Halloween party. They were dressed like Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan.
There was a Christmas pic of the whole family with Santa at the local Macy’s. She
clicked on a video of the family singing happy birthday to Robin when she
turned one. The baby looked terrified and confused. She clicked on another
video of a drunk Jim riding a mechanical bull. The iron beast turned, spun
around, bucked and in an instant Jim was on his back laughing. The next photo
was of a monster, dark purple bruise the size of a grapefruit that was on Jim’s
inner thigh from the bull ride. There were forty pictures of Jim and Karen out
on date nights. She loved to take a picture of them reaching across the dinner
table and holding each other’s hands, their fancy cocktails sitting
decoratively in the background. Seeing the photos of the two of them together and
happy helped to calm her. She was no longer focusing on the horrible day.
Instead she was dreaming about the wonderful past. She thumbed through two
hundred photos that spanned the last four years. Each one filling her heart
with love and warmth, replacing all of her negative thoughts with pure ones and
she was ready to fall asleep.
Karen woke to the sound of
Robin crying. She felt like she had just closed her eyes and now she had to get
up. This wasn’t a shock. Robin had been an amazingly easy kid to potty train
and she was not one to pee the bed. Instead, the little one would partially
wake up, sit on her knees and cry until someone took her to the bathroom. Karen
was pretty used to waking up in the middle of the night and making this run to
the toilet with Robin. It happened almost every night. Karen scooped up her
baby and carried her to the master bathroom. When Karen placed the wobble
legged child down on the floor to get her little underwear to her ankles, Robin
looked comical. She shook and gyrated like this was her first time standing on
her own. Karen had to keep Robin’s ginger noggin between her thighs as she set
the still sleeping kid down on the toilet. She once made the mistake of walking
away mid-stream and Robin toppled forward off the throne. She fell, face first
and landed hard on the bathroom floor. Karen felt horrible and from that day
forward made sure she was there to brace her until the end.
Robin finished and Karen
got ready again for bed. On the walk back to the mattress Karen heard a noise
coming from somewhere in the house. A thump, and it was beating like a drum. She
was so exhausted that she contemplated leaving it alone and not investigating
the cause of the sound.
It could be Troy. Maybe
he needs help.
She thought.
She laid Robin down on the
bed next to her sister, picked up her gun and quietly headed out of the
bedroom. The thumping got louder as she weaved down the hall into the kitchen. The
interior lights were all out, but there was light leaking in through the
boarded up sliding glass door. This walk reminded Karen of all the horror
movies she used to watch in her teens and into her twenties. The strong female
lead walked into the darkness and toward the scary noise instead of leaving it
alone and calling the cops. She just needed the musical stinger and a stupid
cat to jump out at her and the scene would be complete. The exterior light was
on in the backyard. She knew it was off when she went to bed.
Who would turn it on? It’s
like leaving an open sign on for any infected in the area!
Karen turned on the dining
room light. She was startled to see Troy sitting on the floor with his
shoulders to the wall, banging the back of his skull against the sheetrock.
Tears flooded the big teddy bear’s face and he was choking down gulps of air.
“Troy! Stop that!” Karen
barked. The sudden flash of light and yelling voice snapped him out of his
trance. His red, glassy eyes flicked up at Karen.
His head came to a stop
and it rested against the wall, “Mama’s dead.” Saying the words brought all of
his emotion to a focal point and he fell apart in front of his sister.
“I know,” she said as she
rushed to his side. Her sadness resurfaced. She took a seat next to him on the
floor and they draped their arms around each other. Their tears poured like
Niagara Falls. Minutes rolled by before either of them could come close to
forming words.
“I woke up on the couch
and…and couldn’t remember how I got here. I… I went to go for a smoke and found
the door all boarded up. I turned on the light and there…there she was…dead. It’s
all my fault!” Troy spit the sentence onto Karen’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have
left her alone. I should have stayed here and protected her.” Troy punched at
the floor.
Karen struggled to regain
her ability to speak. She pulled her head off of Troy’s shoulder. “If you had
stayed here, then the girls and I would be dead. You know Mama wouldn’t stand
for that. That woman would take a bullet for us. She’d jump in front of a train
to save either of us and you know it.” Karen was not sure who she was trying to
convince. Troy, herself, the real answer was both.
“What are we going to do
without her?” Troy asked.
“Whatever it takes.” Karen
ran her hand over her nose and wiped it clean.
“We gotta get her buried.
I don’t want those bastards to take a single bite out of her.” Troy pushed the
tears off his cheeks.
“In the morning. We should
wait until it’s light out.”
“We gotta do it right now,
damn it! I can’t sleep until it’s done!”
Karen studied her
brother’s face. She could see that there was no changing his mind on this.
“Let’s get the shovels,” Karen pushed herself up off the floor and helped Troy
to his feet.
They entered the garage.
Troy was confused by the new Subaru that was filling up the garage.
“Where did you guys get
that?” Troy asked as he grabbed a shovel.
“Down the street at the
neighbors.” Karen picked up a lantern that hung from the wall.
“Good thinking. We should
fill it with supplies in case we need to make a quick exit.” Troy picked up a
second shovel and slung both of them up onto his shoulder.
Karen felt she didn’t need
to go into any more details about what happened when they got the car. The
garage had its own exterior door that led to the backyard. They stepped through
it and out onto the concrete pad where their Mother laid dead. It was chilly
out and a cold wind blew in from the west. Karen could smell the smoke from all
the fires that were still burning in the surrounding areas. They tip toed out
into the backyard. Troy checked the gate and made sure it was shut. He peeked
through a gap in the fence. Karen joined him and they both checked to make sure
the street was clear. It was so quiet out. Only the sound of the wind blowing
in the trees could be heard. The second they started digging into the earth
they were going to make a lot of noise. If there were any infected in the area
they would be on the two of them in an instant.
The street lamps glowed
brightly. They could see the Charger and the mound of dead bodies that laid all
around it. The scene was grizzly. The twisted body parts and coagulated blood
filled the street. The big body of the infected bruiser that stopped the police
cruiser cold was poking out from under the backend of the cruiser. A gust of
wind hit Karen in the face and there was another odor mixed in with the smell
of smoke. It was the dead bodies. A horrible realization popped into Karen’s
head.
We’ll have to burn the
bodies.
How bad would it reek
after a couple of warm spring days?
Karen
thought to herself.
The smell of rotting flesh
would be unbearable. There was another chore she had to put on the list.
A lot of the houses still
had their interior lights on. There was no one to turn them off. It meant that
those houses could be looted without the worry that someone might get hurt. Karen
made a mental note of all the houses with their lights on. They would need to
gather as many supplies as they could. They waited and watched the street for a
few minutes just to be sure.
Troy whispered, “Do you
see anything?”
“It looks clear to me.” Karen
stepped away from the fence.
They could get to work.
“Where should we dig?”
Karen held the lantern up and surveyed the backyard. She tried to keep her gaze
off of the two dead bodies at her feet. “Where would it be safe? We don’t want
to hit a power line.”
“We should put her next to
the flower bed,” Troy said as he headed in its direction.
Karen followed him and set
the lantern down on the ground next to the proposed grave.
“Alright let’s get this
over with,” Troy said as he drove the shovel’s head deep into the soft
dirt.