Just as he turns his attention back to the hatch, the bloody arm disappears back up through the whole.
“No!” he shouts. “No, don’t you fucking do it! Don’t put your other arm down here! I fucking dare you!”
The thought of having to break the zombie child’s other arm is too much to bear.
But the arm doesn’t appear. Nothing appears. Instead, he can hear the zombie child getting to her feet. She walks away from the hatch.
Dan has finished puking and is wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Where did she go?” he croaks.
“No idea.”
A new sound comes down through the hole now: it’s a whiny scratching noise. Like fingernails on glass. It takes Thomas a few seconds to figure out what the zombie child is doing.
“She went to the window,” he mumbles. “Maybe … maybe she saw something.” He turns and points. “Check the windows in the other room, Dan.”
Dan slips around Jennie, who reaches for him, and steps through the hole in the wall. Thomas holds his breath waiting. A few seconds pass. Then Dan shouts: “A car! Thomas, I can see a car! Someone’s coming!”
Thomas feels his heart leap.
At that exact moment, something happens which turns the situation upside down completely inside the steamy basement: The last screw gives way and the radiator comes loose.
NINE
Once again, everything speeds up. Like fast-forwarding a movie.
Jennie staggers towards Thomas, dragging the heater noisily behind her.
Thomas is still standing on the second rung of the ladder. He turns just in time to see her, gives a yelp and jumps aside. Jennie’s outstretched hands only catch the ladder. Thomas runs behind the nearest stool, lifting it up and holding it out like a shield. A gutted rabbit still dangles from the seat.
Jennie comes at him, not paying the slightest notice to the stool, even as Thomas thrusts it at her, knocking her backwards. She just regains balance and tries again, snarling hungrily.
Thomas backs away, bumping into the table, turning in another direction. He doesn’t dare take his eyes off of Jennie, as they perform a bizarre dance: him backing up, her still dragging the heater on the cord. Thomas throws the stool at her face. She falls over backwards, but immediately tries to get back up. Thomas grabs the next stool, just as he notices Dan’s head peeking in through the hole in the wall.
“Watch out!” Thomas roars. “She’s free!”
His warning is redundant; Dan has eyes. In fact, he has very large eyes right now. They’re staring at the reanimated corpse of his older sister, now sensing his presence and turning around to come at him, her thin fingers reaching for him, her mouth gargling eagerly.
“For fuck’s sake, Dan! Get out of the way!”
This time, the warning is not redundant, as it snaps Dan out of his temporary trance. He disappears through the hole a second before Jennie bends over clumsily and tries to follow him.
Oh, shit! He’ll be trapped in there! There’s no room to move around her …
Thomas’s gaze falls on the heater still tied to Jennie’s leg. He jumps forward, grabs it and tugs hard.
Her leg jerks backwards, causing her to slide into a painful split. With a grunt she tries to crawl on, but Thomas pulls the heater again, dragging her a few feet away from the wall. Jennie flails her arms, clawing at the concrete floor, as though to pull herself forward.
Thomas tugs again, and the cord breaks, sending him tumbling backwards into a stool. Jennie, finally free of her anchor, crawls eagerly forward and slips through the hole in the wall.
“Oh, fuck … Dan! She’s coming for you!”
“I’m safe!” Dan’s voice calls back. “At least I think so …”
Thomas steps carefully to the hole and looks into the other room. Jennie has come to her feet and is making her way through the maze of old furniture and junk. She bumps into things, knocking stuff to the floor, but keeps steering determined towards the far corner, where a large dresser is standing. For a moment, Thomas figures Dan must have locked himself inside the dresser, but then he sees him on top of it. There’s little more than two feet between the dresser and the ceiling, but Dan has managed to squeeze himself into the tight space.
Jennie reaches the dresser and reaches up. The tips of her fingers are ten inches short of the top of the dresser.
“She … she can’t get to me …” Dan says, looking like he might laugh or cry any minute.
Then, there’s a loud, terrified scream from up above.
Thomas looks to the ceiling, then over at Dan. “I think our guests have met the zombie kid.”
TEN
“I need to go on,” Thomas tells Dan. “Are you gonna be okay?”
Jennie is still standing by the dresser, stretching her arms in the air, like a groupie trying to touch her idol on stage. She moans and steps a few inches from side to side, but makes no other effort to find a way to get to Dan.
“Do I have a choice?” Dan asks grimly. “It’s okay, just go. I’ll make it till you find help.”
“Right. If anything happens, just call out as loud as you can.”
“I will.”
Thomas darts one last look at Jennie. She’s completely absorbed with Dan and doesn’t seem like she’ll get tired of him anytime soon. Thomas is just about to turn around, when something comes to him. “Dan?” he says. “She’s not your sister anymore.”
Dan looks blankly at him from across the room. “I know.”
“It’s just … don’t get tempted to … you know … touch her or anything. Okay?”
Dan sends him a pale smile. “Don’t worry.”
“Right. I’ll be back soon. Hang tight.”
He runs to the ladder, steps up and stops for a moment to listen. Somewhere up there, he can hear footsteps running and a man’s voice shouting, but it seems to come from farther away, probably in another room. Now that the zombie child is no longer right above him, he doesn’t need to break down the hatch—he can simply reach his arm up through the hole and grope his way to the lock. He finds it, pulls it, and there’s a loud click. Finally, he can push open the hatch.
Thomas sticks his head up into a room which appears very bright to Thomas’s eyes, although there is only one window, and it’s covered by red drapes. It’s a bedroom with a single bed. More family photos on the walls. The door to the living room is open. He can’t see or hear anything from in there. In fact, the house has suddenly fallen completely silent.
He climbs up and closes the hatch behind him. As he strides to the door, something sharp jabs at his heel.
“Ouch, goddamnit!”
He lifts his foot and sees a piece of broken glass protruding from the sole of his sneaker. He carefully wrenches it free and throws it aside. He pulls off his shoe and checks the damage. Only a small cut in his heel. It’s bleeding a little, but nothing severe. As he pulls his shoe back on, he finally notices the broken glass strewn all over the wooden floor. There’s also something which might once have been flowers, but now have been trampled to a mush. Almost all of the pieces of glass are sticky with something dark, and he can make out small, dark footprints all over the room. He reconstructs to himself how there must have been a glass vase with flowers standing on the night table. The zombie child then knocked the glass vase to the floor, breaking it, and then proceeded to wander around in her restless search for something to eat, for what looks like several hours, maybe even days, stepping on the shards, ripping her feet to bloody shreds.
Good thing for her she can’t feel anything.
Thomas goes to the door and peers into the living room. It’s a chaotic mess like he remembers it, with tipped-over chairs and stuff knocked to the floor. He also smells something sweet and metallic.
Whoever came went and opened the door to the bedroom, letting the zombie kid out right into his own arms.
Thomas makes his way through the room, noticing the bloody footprints on the carpet. A sound reaches him, makes him stop dead in his
tracks. It’s a wet smacking noise. Like a child eating Bolognese for the first time and making a mess of it.
It’s coming from the kitchen.
Thomas looks around for a weapon. He didn’t think to bring the pipe. Instead, he grabs a big, pink crystal rock from a shelf. It feels satisfyingly heavy in his hand, giving him the courage to go on towards the opening to the kitchen. A dreadful sight meets him.
In the middle of the kitchen, sprawled out on the vinyl floor, is a grown man. His skin is dark and he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The colors of his clothes are hard to discern, as they’re completely soaked with blood.
His stomach is open. It reminds Thomas of something he saw in a medical documentary about open heart surgery. Something is hanging out of the side of the crater. It looks like a piece of raw sausage with the filling sucked out of it. The rest of the content of the poor man’s stomach is mercifully hidden from view by the girl who’s sitting on her knees, feasting away. With one hand, she digs eagerly into the man’s intestines, transporting them to her mouth and chewing loudly. The other arm, which is broken, hangs limply by her side.
Apparently, this one-armed system isn’t working fast enough to satisfy the girl’s appetite, because suddenly she bends over and simply buries her face in the guy’s stomach.
Thomas breathes firmly through his nose—which immediately proves a mistake, as it only intensifies the smell of blood and meat. He knows he needs to move on. That he’s still in a hurry. That the guy on the floor might only be minutes from waking up, and then he’ll have two zombies to deal with.
So, he slips through the kitchen as close to the wall as possible. His eyes are fixed on the girl, and that’s why he doesn’t notice the bottle of olive oil lying on the floor. He accidentally kicks it, and it rolls across the floor, hitting the table leg with a loud Clank!
Thomas freezes, raising the stone, ready to throw it at the zombie girl.
But she doesn’t react at all to the noise; not even a flinch. She just keeps eating.
Thomas breathes a sigh of relief. He hurries on. Makes it out of the kitchen and into a hallway. There are a couple of closed doors. At the end is the scullery. He reminds himself about the fact that he can’t know for sure if anyone else is in the house—living or dead. So, he keeps the crystal stone held high, ready to strike at anyone trying to surprise him.
He makes it through the hallway with no one doing so, and he finds the front door open wide. Before leaving the house, he throws himself at the scullery sink, turning on the faucet and drinking greedily in big, loud gulps until his belly feels like it’s ready to burst. Immediately, he feels better.
Then, he steps out of the house into the bright daylight. The sun is still up, but it has lost some of its power. He hasn’t got a watch, but he figures it’s got to be around dinnertime.
His own car is parked where he left it. The door to the driver’s side is open. Another car is parked next to it. It’s empty.
Thomas takes out his phone and tries to activate the screen, but nothing happens.
“Come on, you piece of shit.” He tries a few more times, before realizing the phone is dead. He must have spent all the juice trying to call 911 a hundred times down in the basement.
Dan left his phone at home by accident, and Jennie’s is probably still in her pocket.
Which means his only option is to drive for help. He runs to the car, gets in, slams the door and turns the key, which is still in the ignition.
Nothing but a dry Click!
The car is as dead as his phone. He notices the gas is on EMPTY.
You gotta be fucking kidding me. I forgot to turn off the engine when I heard Dan screaming.
Frustrated, he gets back out of the car and goes to the other one. He grabs the driver’s door, but finds it locked. He goes to check the back door and jumps backwards as a face appears inside the car.
ELEVEN
“Holy shit!”
Thomas manages only by sheer effort of will not to turn around and bolt.
A woman is crouching on the floor of the backseat, obviously trying to make herself invisible and obviously not a zombie, as her face is full of emotions; terror, most of all, mixed with a healthy dose of shock. She points what looks like a nail file up at him.
“Stay away!” she yells, her voice trembling. “I’ve already called the police! They’re on their way!”
“Thank God,” Thomas sighs, holding up his hands. “I won’t hurt you. I’m just—”
“Get away from the car!” the woman demands, stabbing the air with her improvised weapon. “It was you! You killed him!”
“I had nothing to do with what happened here. I was just delivering the paper.”
The woman flicks her eyes, as though she doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. Her hair is red, her skin is pale and freckled. She’s older than him, perhaps in her mid-twenties, and somehow, she seems vaguely familiar.
Thomas suddenly remembers about the three—soon to be four—zombies in the house, and that he left the front door open wide. He hurries to close it. As he returns to the car, the woman is now sitting on the backseat. Her blue eyes follow him intently.
Then Thomas remembers where he has seen her before. In the photo album in the basement.
“You’re her daughter-in-law,” he says.
The woman rolls down the window an inch or so and squints out at him. “What’s that?”
“The woman who lived here. You’re her daughter-in-law, right?”
Her eyes are still suspicious. “Why do you say ‘lived’?”
“Because she’s dead. Like the man and the little girl, who—” Thomas interrupts himself abruptly, as he realizes what he’s saying.
But it’s too late. The woman’s face crumbles into tears.
You moron. That was her husband and her daughter.
“Uhm … I’m sorry,” he mutters stupidly.
The woman just sobs into her hands.
Thomas rubs his forehead and closes his eyes for a moment. It’s finally over. Almost, at least. Before long, the police will arrive, and they will be able to pacify the zombies. If only Dan can hold out a few more minutes …
“What is this?” the woman whispers in between her sobs. “What … what happened to them?”
“They’ve become zombies,” Thomas murmurs. “Like on TV.”
The woman looks up at him with wet eyes and an expression like she had forgotten about him being here. “What?”
“Your mother-in-law made some fucked up ritual in the basement. I think that’s how it started. Was she into witchcraft or some crazy shit like that?”
“Voodoo,” the woman whispers. “But that’s not … that can’t be …” She starts crying again. “Oh, Janjak …”
Thomas says nothing, and the woman cries for a minute. A honey bee buzzes by lazily. He listens for sirens but can’t hear anything in the quiet summer air.
“Did the police say when they’d be here?” he asks. “My friend is trapped still inside.”
The woman wipes her eyes and shakes her head. “I … I didn’t call the police.”
Thomas gapes at her. “What? Why the hell not?”
“I left my phone at home to recharge.”
“Goddamnit! Then why did you say …?” He moans. “Forget it. We need to go get help. My car is out of gas, so we’ll go in yours.”
He’s about to go to the driver’s side, when the woman says: “My husband took the key with him.”
Thomas stops and smacks himself on the forehead. “Of course he did. This just keeps getting better. How about your mother-in-law? She must have a car …” He looks around, but sees neither car nor garage.
“Esther doesn’t have a car.”
Thomas flails his arm. “Come on! You can’t live all the way out here without a fucking car! Christ! Right, you need to run to the highway. At least a couple of cars must come by every hour or so. You can stop one of them and ask them to call for help.”
; The woman shakes her head firmly. “No!”
Thomas steps closer to the window, and she pulls back like a scared animal.
“Listen, I’ve cut my foot, so I can’t make it. My friend in there hasn’t had a sip of water since we came here several hours ago. I’m afraid he might faint or go into shock or something. And then my girlfriend will probably get him. She’s also—”
Something catches the woman’s gaze behind Thomas as he is speaking, and she turns her head and screams.
Thomas spins around, ready to fight, but he’s still alone in the courtyard, and the front door is still closed. But right next to it is a tall, narrow window. On the other side, the black guy is pressing his face against the glass, his eyes flickering empty in their sockets.
So, he’s woken up, too, Thomas thinks. That means Dan is now alone in the house with four zombies.
As though his thoughts have caused it, Dan’s voice suddenly screams: “Thomas! Thomaaaas! Heeeelp!”
TWELVE
There is terror in Dan’s voice, but to Thomas’s surprise, the scream isn’t coming from inside the house; it’s coming from behind it.
Thomas starts running, ignoring the pain from his wounded foot. He rounds the corner of the house, passes by a terrace, jumps across a flower bed. As he runs, he wonders how Dan has managed to exit the house. He stops on the lawn of the back garden and looks around.
“Dan?” he calls out. “Where are you?”
“Here!”
Thomas turns. The basement window is halfway hidden behind a couple of giant dandelions. Dan’s arm is waving frantically.
Thomas runs over and falls to his knees. As soon as he looks into the basement, he can tell that Jennie has either grown two feet taller or found something to stand on, because she’s suddenly able to look over the top of the closet, and her arms are grabbing greedily for Dan, who is squeezing himself up against the window. Jennie’s fingers grope at his shoes.
Dead Meat (Book 1): Dead Meat [Day 1] Page 4