Sara gnawed at one of her
last remaining fingernails. The sound of the engine revving and the click of
her chewing was a great mashup. Otherwise the ride to the RS Medical was
silent. They didn’t have a lot to talk about and all of them were dead tired.
Frank popped another stick of bubble gum into his mouth as Jim pulled into the
disabled spot outside the main doors to the store.
The lights were off and
the windows were intact. Jim was surprised to find the building untouched. He
thought that a medical store would be the first place hit after an infection
like this had swept the area.
“We should check out the
building first.” Jim spoke softly. Cliff’s advice about knowing the exits was
ringing in his ears.
“Look over there,” Frank
said as he pointed across the street. Tucked in a tiny strip mall was a shop
that had a one word name. In big black letters just above the door was the word
GUN. Not a super clever name, but you knew exactly what they had to offer
customers. It was a little store and its lights were out as well. “We need to
hit that place. I’m running low.”
Great, another stop. Jim
understood how important it was that Frank not run out of ammo, but more stops
meant more time and he was not sure how much Devon had left.
Jim’s head bobbed up and
down, “Okay. You got the list?” he asked as he readied his spear for action.
Frank patted his breast pocket.
“Yep, got it right here.”
Jim and Frank reached to
open their doors. Jim’s fingers looped into the chrome finished handle and he
was about to yank it open when a group of zombies slammed into his door. Jim
could not help himself, the sudden movement and noise along with the wrecked
features of this infected woman at his window made him screech out in a high
pitched voice.
The ear piercing sound of
“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” filled the PT Cruiser’s cabin.
Karen set her pistol down
next to the sink in the bathroom. When she turned on the light she didn’t
recognize herself. The woman in the mirror looked a decade older. Black circles
encased her eyes. Her hair was matted. She was covered in a layer of sweaty
salt and dried blood. She needed an hour long shower but only had time for a
two minute sink scrub. She got to work. The cool water quickly turned hot as
she cranked up the faucet. Karen splashed handfuls of water onto her face and
she scrubbed hard to get the nasty parts of the day off of her. To make sure
she didn’t waste time, she counted down from fifteen and every time she hit
zero she moved onto a new spot and started cleaning it. She got most of the
gunk out of her hair and off her face. She found a couple of her Mama’s hair
clips and used them to keep her red mane out of her face.
Four, three, two, one
and zero.
Done. She looked a little
more like herself. Well at least she didn’t look like a murder victim anymore.
She placed her gun back into its holster and exited the bathroom.
She entered the living
room and found that the girls were zoned out in front of the TV and Troy had an
icepack held to his forehead. Leon had wrapped a good amount of gauze and
bandages around the wound to stop the bleeding. Troy looked up at his sister
when she entered the room.
“My head hurts so bad.”
Troy’s voice was rough and dry.
“I know,” Karen moved
closer to him and pulled away the icepack and lifted the bandage. The gash in
his forehead had turned dark purple. She replaced the bandage and the icepack.
“Can you stay here and watch the girls? I’ve got a lot of work to get done
around here.”
“Okay, I like this
cartoon. It’s pretty funny.” Troy looked away from his sister and back to the
TV.
It was like having another
child to take care of. She hoped he would be better soon. They were going to
need him to get back to normal fast.
Karen left the living room
and headed for Leon in the dining room. He had just closed the blinds to the
sliding glass door so they wouldn’t have to see the two dead bodies in the
backyard. Karen kept her focus and moved straight for the garage.
Leon followed her and
tried to gauge her mood. He struggled with being so somber for this long. He
knew it was only a matter of time before he said something silly and
embarrassed himself. He wanted so badly to impress her and hoped that she
appreciated how well he had taken care of Troy and the girls. Karen left the
door open to the garage for him and she fired up the lights.
He got to see the full
view of the packed garage. “Wow, look at all this shit,” Leon regretted the
words the second he said them, but as far as silly things to say it wasn’t the
worst. Over the years he had definitely put his foot, his leg and even his
whole body in his mouth.
When’s the baby due?
Oh, you’re not pregnant. Sorry.
Excuse me, sir, that’s
the lady’s restroom. Oh, pardon me, Ma’am.
Karen handed Leon a fully
loaded tool belt. He wrapped it around his body and cinched it down to fit his
slim waist.
Karen pointed at five
sheets of inch thick plywood that leaned against the garage wall. Next to it
stacked on the concrete was a pile of two by fours and two by sixes, “Mama
miscalculated when she ordered the lumber for the chicken coop. She ended up
buying twice as much wood as she needed and by the time she noticed her mistake
it was past the store’s thirty day return policy. She kept it and had planned
to build another coop to keep rabbits in.” Karen heard her own voice. It
sounded like a computer. Regurgitating facts, but there was no emotion behind
what she was saying. She was in shock. No doubt about it.
“We should be able to
block up most of the windows with this stuff,” Leon said as he looked over the
area. Penny had purchased a bunch of top of the line gear to build that coop
outside. She had a battery powered handsaw and drills, plus a box of about a
thousand screws.
“They don’t have to look
pretty. They just have to be strong enough to keep a gang of the monsters out.”
Karen pointed at her wrist. “I’m not going to be much help, but I’ll try.”
Leon pulled off his suit
jacket and said affirmatively, “Let’s get to work.”
“Front windows first.
There’s the kitchen window and one in each of the two bedrooms. Those three are
facing the street and the most likely to be hit.” Karen helped him carry the
tools into the kitchen. Then the two of them hauled as much lumber as they
could out of the garage.
Leon measured out the
window in the kitchen. It was big and would need one full sheet of plywood
itself.
“Use a set of the two by
fours on each side of the window. If we secure them to the wall it would give
us a better place to mount the plywood to.” Karen was already working up
another sweat.
“Then we can use the two
by sixes to reinforce the plywood.” Leon picked up the drill and climbed up
onto the counter. Karen helped hold the chunk of wood in position. Leon stood
on Penny’s new granite counters and worked quickly to find a stud in the wall
to fasten the two by four to. In only a few minutes he had the anchors in place
and the two of them worked the large length of plywood behind the sink’s
faucet. Karen handed him screw after screw as he got the big piece up and
blocked out the window.
“We need to fill as many
containers as we can find with water,” Karen said as she looked around the
kitchen.
“The human body needs a
gallon of water a day to function correctly. We also need about a gallon a day
for food prep and to keep ourselves clean.” Leon rattled off this tidbit of
info as he pulled a two by six up onto the counter to start building a frame
system to fortify the window barricade.
Karen crunched the numbers
in her head. Five humans times two gallons of water each day, minus the fact
that the girls didn’t need as much water meant they needed about sixty gallons
of water stored just to last about a week.
That’s a shit ton of
H2O!
If the water gets shut
off we are fucked.
Luckily they lived in the
northwest and it rains around forty inches every year. They would need to build
a water catching device and figure out how to clean and purify the water.
Leon sunk the last screw
into the brace and then gave it a hard push with his hands. The barricade
didn’t budge.
“I think this should
hold,” he said as he climbed down off the counter. He was pouring sweat now and
his shirt had pitted out.
“Good, let’s keep going,”
Karen picked up as many tools as she could and headed for the nearest room.
The window in the first room
was small and they were able to cut the chunk of plywood in half. Karen kept a
lookout as Leon made quick work of the cut. The saw was powerful and ripped
right through it in a flash. If there were any remaining infected in the area,
Karen hoped they wouldn’t hear the noise and if they did she prayed they would
not be able to locate its origin. This room held all of Penny’s sewing projects.
She had made dresses for the girls this last Christmas and the machine and
fabric was still laid out all over the room. There was bookshelf full of
fabrics and patterns that Penny had saved over the years and a worktable with a
very fancy sewing machine. Other than those two pieces of furniture the room
was bare.
Leon had the braces up and
set the frame in half the time as the first window. He gave it the test and it
didn’t flex at all.
“Whew,” he exhaled as he
flexed his sore fingers.
Karen picked up the tools
and moved into the next room. This one was used as an actual spare bedroom with
an old queen mattress tucked tight up against the far wall and a nightstand. As
she reached for the string to pull the blinds shut Karen checked out the window
for any new infected. It was clear. She gave the string a good tug and let the
blinds fall. A scream slashed through the air outside. Karen’s fingers
separated a set of blinds and she peered out across the street. A young boy,
maybe ten, raced for his life from an infected woman. The dead woman chugged
hot on the boy’s trail. He headed for the front door of the house directly in
front of Penny’s home. His palm struck the wood surface and he pulled at the
knob. His voice cried the words, “Please help me! Please open the door!” The
second the woman was about to pounce on him he darted under her outstretched
arms. In a flash he sprinted for the open gate that led to the house’s
backyard.
“Leon!” Karen pulled her
gun and blasted out the bedroom door.
What am I doing?
I promised myself I
wouldn’t do this. Am I crazy?
Karen knew the answer. No
matter how hard she tried to fight it she was compelled to save people. Karen was
a blur as she passed the doorway to Penny’s sewing room.
“What’s going on?!” Leon
called after her.
“There’s a kid in trouble!”
She hit the front door and twisted the lock open. Leon called after her as she
exited the front door. She was bathed in the evening sun as she zipped down the
driveway. Her skin glowed and her hair fell out of the cheap plastic clip. The
child’s bawling echoed out over the fence. Leon left in such a hurry to make
sure he kept Karen safe he forgot to grab his axe or Troy’s shotgun. The only
weapons on his body was the set of screwdrivers jiggling in the tool belt and
the battery powered handsaw. He did his best to catch her, but she was blazing
fast across the street.
Karen breached the gate
and slowed to make sure she wasn’t running into a hiding horde or into the back
of the dead lady. In the center of the yard stood a large maple with a treehouse
perched in the thick branches. The ten-year-old was halfway up the tree and
hanging on for dear life. The infected woman had her gnarled fingers wrapped
around the kid’s sneaker and was trying to wrangle him off of the ladder made
of wooden slats.
Karen lined up a shot, but
at this distance she didn’t trust her shaky, non-dominant, hand to not hit the
kid. She quickly moved in behind the infected not letting the thing see her.
Leon joined them in the yard. He searched to make sure there wasn’t any more of
the monsters hiding in the bushes or corners. His head moved back and forth so
fast that it was about to rip off. Karen was ten feet from the infected and
about to fire a round into the back of its head when the boy’s grip failed and
he began to fall.
His descent off of the
ladder looked like it was happening in slow motion to Karen. The kid’s chin hit
three rungs on the way down to the grass. The impact on the rough, wood surface
split the skin on his jaw wide open. When his legs hit the ground Karen knew
right away what that snapping sound was.
The child howled in agony
as he clutched his shin. The little guy’s foot dangled from the broken socket.
The infected woman’s full body collapsed and covered the child on the ground.
Karen had finally closed the distance to the infected woman and placed the tip
of her gun to the back of its skull. Karen squeezed the trigger at the same
time the dead woman sank her teeth into the boy’s arm. The bullet destroyed the
brain and blood sprayed all over the child. Her infected teeth were still
buried in the kid’s skin.
“Oh my god!” Leon was now
standing next to Karen and unable to comprehend just how bad this was. He had
not yet seen someone get bit, never witnessed the transformation and was not
mentally prepared for what was about to come next. “What do we do?!?” Leon nearly
shouted as he ran his hand over his forehead to clear the sweat from his brow.
Karen didn’t know. She had
witnessed what happened to Steve in her apartment and now it was about to
happen to this kid.
SHIT!
Karen tugged on the dead
woman’s shirt and tried to pull her off of the crying child. Its teeth were
locked deep into the kid’s flesh. She tried harder to yank the infected off of
the boy and he cried even louder.
The boy panicked and
called out, “DON’T, IT HURTS!”
“We’ve got to get this
thing off you!” Leon said as he lent a helping hand and grabbed the infected by
the back of its blood covered hair. He dragged the dead body off of the boy and
a chunk of meat from his little arm also came along for the ride too.
Karen almost lost it and
fought to keep the little bit of water she had drank.
Leon got the dead body
cleared from the boy. “You have to be quiet.” he whispered. Karen knelt in the
grass next to the boy and tried to cradle him in her arms.
“Shhh.” She said as she tried
her best to calm him, but his injures were too extreme. The hole in his forearm
had already turned black and his veins were following suit.
“I can’t believe how fast
it moves. We have to get out of here, right?” Leon said as he backed away.
“We have to take care of
this first.” Karen’s voice cut with a blackness Leon had never heard before.
“What are you talking
about?!”
“He will
turn
and
we have to take care of it!”