I turned back and aimed the Glock at the band of pursuing undead but hesitated before firing. The ghouls stumbled at the foot of the steps and began to crawl over the obstacle. I turned back to the door in front of me and tried the handle.
“Fuck.” The door didn’t open when I turned the tarnished brass knob.
I barged the wooden door with my shoulder and felt it give a little. The damn thing wasn’t locked, something was placed behind it to stop it from opening. The undead fell over themselves in a tangle of arms and legs, still clawing their way up the steps. I shoved the door again, harder this time and something heavy scraped across the floor inside the house. The door opened a little further.
I kept ramming against the wooden panels, shoving and pushing in a frenzy. Sweat poured off me and I gasped for breath but the door was slowly opening inch by inch, with every thrust I made. The leading undead reached the top of the steps and padded across the veranda on all fours, hissing and gurgling with their gazes firmly fixed on me.
My arms and shoulders ached but I couldn’t stop pushing the door. Another couple of shoves and I felt I could squeeze through the gap into the house beyond. I rattled the door and heard myself whimper.
A bony hand grabbed my ankle and pulled backward. I spun around and looked down. An emaciated male with long straggly hair opened his jaws and was about to sink his teeth into the back of my calf. I half crouched, bringing round the barrel of the Glock. I fired once and the zombie’s skull exploded over the veranda, spraying brown blood and decaying brain matter across the dry wooden boards. The hand around my ankle went limp and released its grip.
“Shit, why didn’t I just stab the bastard?” I admonished myself. Now the gunshot was going to attract the whole crowd of undead from the neighborhood.
I shoved at the door again and it slid open a couple more inches. I dived through the gap and felt fingers clawing at the back of my cargo pants as I plunged into the gloomy room beyond the threshold. The fruit knife fell from my grasp and clattered across the interior. I stumbled and rolled onto my ass, narrowly missing smashing my head on a big wooden workbench leaning against the inside of the door. No wonder it had been so hard to open.
I kicked out, trying to knock the grabbing hands away and also trying to close the door with my feet. An almost skeletal head and upper torso crawled through the doorway, clawing at my thrashing feet.
“Fuck it,” I spat, sitting up slightly and aiming the handgun at the bony face beyond my toes.
I fired once and the face burst in a dark red mist, rocking the torso backwards and out through the doorway. I shuffled on my backside towards the door and shoved it closed with the sole of my foot. The door slammed and almost immediately rattled in the frame as the undead banged on the wooden panels from the other side.
I groaned in exertion as I crawled back under the workbench and scrabbled to my feet. I heaved the bench back tightly against the door then rested for a couple of seconds with my head leaning on top of the pockmarked wooden work surface.
“Jeez,” I muttered. “Who would be me?”
The stench of cordite from the gunshot was fused with a musty damp smell. I raised my head and took in my surroundings. I was inside a small kitchen area, with homemade wooden countertops running at waist height around the wall to the right of the door and on the right side of the room. A blackened wood burning stove sat against the wall to the left and a closed door stood directly behind me.
My moment of respite was short lived. The small window above the countertop to my right burst into fragments and showered the floor with hundreds of glass chips. Dead rotting hands reached in through the broken frame and decaying faces leered at me through the gap. The door in front of me clattered against the workbench and I figured it was time to make a move.
I spied the fruit knife on the floor and bent to pick it up but kept the Glock in my right hand, scooping up the blade in my left. There was only one way to go and I silently prayed I wasn’t heading straight into another crowd of undead as I strode towards the closed door to the rear of the kitchen.
Chapter Sixty-Two
I kept both weapons in my hands and struggled to open the door with just my thumb and forefinger, gripping the fruit knife with my remaining fingers. The door creaked in its frame as I pulled it open a crack and peered through the gap.
A loud crashing sound behind me caused me to spin around. The undead were breaking through the wrecked window and pushing back the workbench holding the door in place. I turned back to the doorway in front of me. I had no choice but to continue on into the house.
Taking a deep breath, I quickly stepped through the doorway and made sure the door was firmly closed behind me. I knew the undead would smash their way into the kitchen in the next few seconds. I looked around, asking myself which way to go.
I stood in a narrow hallway with the front door to my right, a rickety looking wooden staircase to my left and an open doorway led to a small living room dead ahead. The living area was cramped with oversized furniture for the size of the room and didn’t offer any other alternative routes. The front door was closed but led to the main street where more zombies would be gathering. The only choice I had was to take the staircase up to the next level.
A bad feeling washed over me as I trod slowly up the creaky staircase. I hoped I was doing the right thing instead of heading straight into another disaster area.
Staggering footfalls clumped across the floor in the kitchen before the door leading to the hallway began rattling violently in its frame. The undead were close on my tail; I had to find a way out of the house and fast.
The staircase crisscrossed, doubling back on itself halfway up. I cautiously continued upward, glancing behind me after every step. The moans, shrieks and groans receded slightly the higher I ascended but it didn’t make me feel any better. I felt as though I was stepping into the unknown with potential dangers lurking and unseen in every direction.
The hallway door wouldn’t contain the undead for much longer and they’d soon be following me through the house. The upper floor narrowed in width and the staircase led to a small landing area, broken up by three closed doors. Again, the doorways stood directly in front of me, to the left and to the right.
I was no real estate expert but I figured one of these doors had to lead to a bathroom of some kind. I hadn’t seen any sort of washroom or toilet on the ground floor. My guess was the bathroom was the door ahead of me. I didn’t know why, just a stupid wild hunch.
I decided to take the door to the left first and hoped I wasn’t making another monumental fuck up. I trod slowly across the landing and stopped in front of my chosen door. I heard wood splintering and crashing from somewhere downstairs and concluded by the increasing sound of roars and groans that the undead had broken their way into the hallway. I put my hand on the door lever but hesitated before pushing it open. Should I take the entranceway opposite?
“Right or left?” I muttered. “Right or left?” I only had time to make one choice and would be in big trouble if I chose wrong.
I wondered how many zombies could possibly fit into a small upstairs room. I had a knife and a gun. I could probably take out a few of them before they got to me. I gritted my teeth and pushed open the door.
I breathed a sigh of temporary relief when I saw no zombies or crazed, gun totting maniacs inside the room. The walls were painted in a dull pink, although the color had probably faded over time. A wooden cot sat in front of a small square window on the far side of the room and a swarm of flies buzzed lazily around the outside of the frame. A bunch of once colorful but now mold ridden soft toys lay piled to the left of the cot. I glanced through the window and saw the side of the house overlooked the neighboring rooftop, with a gap of only a few feet between the houses. I immediately knew what I had to do but didn’t like it one bit. I was going to have to jump from rooftop to rooftop.
The thought of skipping across rooftops brought back painful memories of the girl I lost in Manhattan when this whole nightmare began. Julia. Her name rankled and the image of her wide, scared eyes as she plummeted to her untimely death played through my mind yet again. I felt the terrible loss of sadness that I’d felt at the time return, along with regret and self blame.
Julia was a wonderful person who I’d only briefly known but we’d experienced a special chemistry between us. Naively, I’d thought we had some sort of future together but that scenario was quickly snuffed out. I couldn’t save her and I’d carried the burden of guilt with me for the duration of the apocalypse.
I turned away from the room with a sorrowful lump in my throat, a pain in my guts and a head full of hollow thoughts. Perhaps I’d take a look in the other rooms, just in case there was a better way out.
I heard the undead clumping around at the foot of the staircase and knew I didn’t have time to waste. I proceeded across the landing anyway and opened the door to the right. The scene was shocking and didn’t make me feel any better. A rush of stale air and the stench of musty, decaying flesh blasted out at me. A man in a blood stained white t-shirt and ripped denims stood facing a window on the opposite side of the room. He had his back to me and slowly turned around. I recognized the milky white eyes, a grotesque symptom of the undead and he opened his mouth, emitting a hissed growl. The remains of a woman, her flesh picked clean from the bones lay on a bed in the center of the room. She was only distinguishable by the remainder of her long black hair, tousled around the open mouthed skull.
I raised the Glock, aiming at the guy’s head and fired. The round blasted through the center of his forehead and sent him crashing back through the window behind him. The undead body broke the glass and fell out of sight, causing a rush of fresh air to waft through the smashed window. It was a waste of ammunition and I didn’t know why I’d felt the urge to shoot this particular ghoul but just felt it was the right thing to do. I closed the door and turned back into the landing.
The undead clattered up the staircase, groaning and screaming as they clawed their way upward. I breathed in and out in a big sigh. Something drove me to check the middle door. I dunked the handle, aimed the Glock into the dark space and pulled the door open.
An unwelcome but familiar face lurched from the murky recess.
Chapter Sixty-Three
“Hey, it’s fucking beautiful, man!”
I recoiled as my alternative self sprang out at me from the small, darkened bathroom. My finger was a fraction from squeezing the trigger of the Glock. He stumbled out onto the landing in front of me with a half empty bottle of whiskey in his hand and dressed in frog green U.S. Army Combat fatigues that looked like they were from the 1960’s. He also wore a combat helmet with an ace of spades playing card poking from camouflage netting and a big pair of sunshades covered his eyes.
I fired one shot but it passed straight through my alternative self and thudded right into the back wall of the small bathroom behind him.
“You missed me, asshole,” he jeered. “Don’t you know you can’t shoot a hallucination?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed.
He stood in front of me and shrugged. “Come to lend a hand is all.”
“You certainly know how to pick your moments,” I growled through gritted teeth. “I thought you were a damn zombie for a second there.”
“I figured as much. You wouldn’t try and shoot your oldest buddy would you?”
“Enough of the nice friendly crap,” I spat, turning to take a glance behind me at the staircase. “I’m in deep shit and I need to get the hell out of here and find my way back to the harbor.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” my alternative self chimed. “I’ll lead the way. Anything to keep you alive, old friend.”
“I’ve never heard so much bullshit,” I snorted. “You always show up when you want to gloat and rub my face into my fuck ups.”
He pulled a mocking pained expression. “You know, you’re really starting to hurt my feelings, Brett.”
I groaned and flapped my hand. “Ah, I haven’t time for this shit.” Loud clumping noises from the staircase caused me to spin around. “Look, those bastards are on their way up here. I have to get out of here. I’m going through that fucking window.” I pointed to the kid’s bedroom and barged by my alternative self.
“Okay, it’s up to you, buddy,” he muttered. “If you want to go jumping across the rooftop, that’s up to you. I know how much you hate doing that and I know the bad memories that come with it.”
I stopped and spun around, glaring at my own parody. “What do you mean by that?” I snapped.
He took off the sunshades and gazed at me with bloodshot eyes. “I am you. I know what you think and I feel what you feel.
Julia
. I know, friend. I know.”