Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (9 page)

As
Johnny leads her away across the yard to the fence, April looks back at her
sister in the window. The child’s mouth is agape as she stares off into
nothingness. Sarah’s head jerks and she stares directly at April. Even though
the girl’s eyes are already glossed over and turning white, April can’t help
but to think she senses something there; a faint hint of the child that used to
be, a subtle spark of awareness.

She
tucks her head into Johnny’s shoulder and he holds her tightly as the dead fill
their home. Their howls drown out April’s sobs. Their wails muffle her cries.
The breaking glass and splintering wood stifle her breaking heart.

·7

Pain nurses away the last bits
of hope from April’s heart as she trudges along behind Johnny, halfheartedly
trying to keep up with him.

“Come on,” he urges her. “It’s
not much farther.”

She looks up toward him, her
eyes puffy and red, diverting her gaze from the ground. “Johnny, I’m tired. I
need to rest for a minute.”

“It’s only another few blocks,”
he says, turning to her. “We can rest once we’re there.”

“How do you know it’s still
there?” she asks. “What if it was looted? What if those
things
are there
and we can’t get through?”

“It’ll be fine, trust me,” he
says, waiting for her.

“But how do you know, Johnny?”

“Listen, this place is only a
few blocks from my work,” he explains. “My buddy lives there. He’s a total
packrat. There’ll be more food than we’ll know what to do with.”

“What about the dead?” she asks.

“There’s a secret way in through
the train yard,” he explains.

“Will your friend let us stay
there?”

“Yeah, Mike’s a great guy,”
Johnny says. “He just has a tendency to overstock on supplies. I think it’s
called OCD or something.”

“So he lives in a shit hole.”                      

“No, that’s not it,” he replies.
“He’s really organized. He just has a
lot
of stuff.” Johnny inspects a
portion of fence between some overgrown hedges and turns to April with a smile,
“Through here,” he motions.

April crouches down between the
hedges and follows Johnny through an open portion of fence. The gap is tight,
but she’s able to wiggle herself through. She snags her shirt on a piece of
fence that is hanging precariously from the other links.

“Damn it!” She exclaims as she
unthreads her shirt from the wire.

Johnny tries to help her, but
reaches her as she finally gets loose. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replies,
adjusting the shirt on her shoulders.

At the edge of the property,
Johnny gazes upward along a narrow building on the other side of the fence. A
series of catwalks connect along the back of the building, extending to ladders
that wind around to each level.

“So we went through a fence to
be blocked off by another fence?” April questions.

“There’s a way around here,”
Johnny says. “Did I happen to mention that Mike’s a little paranoid?”

“And?”

“And he used to come in through
here so no one would know that he was home.” Johnny reaches up to a low hanging
branch and pulls himself up.

“Yeah, that
is
a little
paranoid,” she replies.

Guttural howls snap them back to
reality. From across the train yard, a horde of the undead shamble pass train
tracks, eyes locked on April and Johnny.

“Shit!” Johnny shouts. “Grab my
hand!” He reaches down and grabs April’s arm.

“Hurry, they’re coming,” she
cries.

With all his strength, Johnny
pulls her upward as her feet scrape on dry, brittle bark, searching for a
foothold. He leans forward, bracing himself on the branch and clasps his other
hand around her wrist.

The dead wind through the train
cars, crunching along loose gravel as they make their way toward the promise of
movement. Dried blood cakes to their uniforms, blots out nametags, and blurs
the image of the station logo that adorns their shirts. With rabid cries, a few
of the dead are on April, clawing at her pants as she tries to kick them away. She
screams and flails her other arm, grasping for anything to take her away from
their snapping mouths.

With a burst of adrenalin,
Johnny tugs her upward, nearly wrenching her over the branch with the force he
exerts.

“Oh, Jesus!” April pants in
terror as the rest of the undead who were lagging behind reach up toward them
with snarling faces and broken, bloody teeth.

Close to the first series of
catwalks, Johnny reaches out and snags the railing. With a quick movement, he
heaves himself over and lands on the catwalk. “Come on,” he says as he reaches
out to April, helping her over.

The dead grow in numbers,
rasping out unintelligible growls as they probe the low hanging branches of the
tree in an attempt to get at the moving feast.

“Where the hell did they all
come from?” April asks, still shaken.

Johnny could see the story play
out in his mind. One of the dead got in, probably the bag lady at the back of
the crowd of bodies, and bit one of the workers. The infection took hold and
reanimated the poor bastard. He, in turn, bit one of the other yard men and so
on until they were all infected. What his imagination couldn’t convey was how
they had snuck up on them without warning.

From the images he had seen on the
news it wasn’t hard to piece it all together. The infection was relentless.
Within minutes of being bitten, people started to change. Their eyes went
white, their hearts stopped beating, and they returned to this unnatural state,
hungry for blood.

He didn’t want to know any more,
he didn’t want to consider the spiritual implications or the mass carnage that
was ripping through the city. Beyond anything else, he didn’t want to think of
how far this had spread. He couldn’t begin to imagine what the rest of the
world looked like now. He suddenly thought of distant islands, of places void
of the dead and the idea of escaping out on a boat into the ocean became all
that much more gratifying.

“Are we going or not?” April
asks, pulling Johnny from his daydream.

“Yeah,” he shakes the thoughts
from his head, “it’s just up there.” He points a couple of floors up to a
landing.

They take to the stairs as the
dead moan bellow in nervous hysteria, frantically searching for a way to get at
them.

“This is it here,” Johnny says,
peering through the window, shielding his eyes to get a better look at the
inside of the apartment. “It doesn’t look like he’s home.”

Johnny works his fingers under
the window pane and slowly pushes it upward, listening between the scraping
sounds for any signs of life inside. The room is completely dark as he crawls
through, only a faint amount of light filters through thick curtains, spotting
out flakes of dust that whisper through the stale air inside.

“Wait here,” he whispers.

After a few minutes, Johnny
returns, pokes his head through the curtains, and waves at April to come in.

“Is it safe?” she asks.

“Yeah, there’s no one here,” he
replies.

The living room is modest with a
set of armchairs and a television. A few magazines litter a side table next to
an empty can of soda. Through the darkness, Johnny opens the curtains fully and
lets the sunlight in.

“I thought you said he was a
packrat,” April says.

“He is, but in the nicest sense
of the word,” he replies, showing her the kitchen.

“Oh my God…” April says in
exasperation.

In the small kitchen, the walls
are completely covered in shelves. Cans of food are organized, label outward
and spaced perfectly in rows. Boxes of instant potatoes, rice, and pancake mix
are sorted next along with bags of flour and spices. Gallon jugs of water line
the bottom rows, organized in the same way.

“It looks like a grocery store,”
April comments.

“I figure we can sleep here
tonight and take whatever we can carry before we head to the coast tomorrow,”
he says, picking up a can of peaches and turning it over in his hand before
placing it back on the shelf.

“Do you actually think there are
rescue ships out there?”

“Sure, there have to be some
coastguard ships just waiting to rescue people who have escaped the city.” He
waves off the question. “Are you hungry?” he asks with a smile.

He thinks again about an island
as he opens the can of pears. He considers the cresting waves and fishing for
their food off the side of a boat.
Maybe being rescued wouldn’t be the best
option
, he thinks,
maybe being away from the dead would be good enough.

Through the night, the dead
pound at the fence line, creating a type of noise that would have been better
suited for a war protest.

April stares at the ceiling,
pockmarked by glints of moonlight, drifting in through the open window. Her
eyes are heavy, but the sweet release of sleep eludes her as the dead grow
outside, howling out their rabid complaints.

She places her hands under her
head and tries to get comfortable, but the noise is too much. She rises from
the bed and goes to the window. Down below, the scene is shocking. Bodies line
the fence for as far as she can see. A mass has gathered, bending and bowing
the fence as they rattle away at the links with snarling faces and snapping
teeth. With her eyes wide from disbelief, April wakes Johnny.

“What?” he asks in a daze.
“What’s wrong?”

“There are hundreds of them out
there,” she whispers.

“Hundreds of what?” he asks in
confusion.

“The dead, Johnny,” she says in
a low voice. “They’re everywhere.”

“How?” He stretches.

“I don’t know how,” she says.
“But there breaking the fence.”

Johnny yawns and tries to shake
off the sleep when he hears the moans. There are so many varying pitches that
they blend into a singular loping sound, deep enough to feel within the pit of
his stomach. “What the fuck?” he asks, still unbelieving.

He stumbles to the window and
looks out past the trees. A dark mass has emerged from nowhere in a few short
hours. The dead writhe over one another like ants swarming. Their bodies blend
into one another in the darkness, giving shape to the loping chant Johnny had
heard when he first awoke.

“Holy shit,” he says, questioning
his eyes. He rubs the sleep away and looks again. “Where the fuck did they all
come from?”

“I don’t know, but we have to
get out of here,” she replies anxiously.

“Yeah… yeah, I think you’re
right,” he says with a nervous rattle in his voice. “Grab whatever you can
carry,” he adds as he retrieves the pistol from the nightstand.

Within a few minutes, April has
found a pack in the bedroom closet and takes it into the kitchen. She stuffs
cans of food into the pack haphazardly as Johnny does the same with a small gym
bag that he’s found by the front door.

“Don’t pack too much,” Johnny
comments, “just enough to get us to the beach.”

April gives him a quick nod as
she cinches the top shut and slings it over her shoulder, causing the cans to
clank against her back. She waits for him to grab a few water bottles from the
refrigerator and watches him pack them away into his own bag.

“Alright, let’s go,” Johnny
whispers as he heads off through the front door.

Windowless, the hallway to the
apartment is blinding. Faint shimmers glisten off of chrome knobs as Johnny
peers out along the dark corridor, listening for any signs of movement up
ahead. He can feel his heart beating in his chest and tries to calm himself,
almost believing that he can hear the organ drumming out against his ribs.

Along a narrow length of stairs,
Johnny guides the way down to the next floor as he points out through the
darkness with his pistol. Even in the confines of the apartment building, they
can hear the muted snarls and groans from outside as if the dead were beckoning
them closer.

“When we’re out of the building,
run,” Johnny whispers, hushing his voice for fear of being heard by the dead.
“Don’t look back and don’t stop. Keep going until I tell you we’re clear. Got
it?”

“Got it,” she says.

Johnny can see the whites of her
eyes as his own adjust to the darkness. Terror streaks across her face as she
tries to make out his movements. Her body shakes through the expression of fear
and she follows as closely as she can.

On the bottom floor, Johnny
keeps his back pressed tightly to the wall when he notices the main door. He
places his hand on her chest and motions for her to stay where she is as he
tiptoes forward. Through the crisscross pattern of wire in the glass, he can
see movement. A black, oozing mass appears beyond the front gates, shrouded in shadows
that blanket them from the branches of a tree.