“I’m gonna do more than just think about it,” Everett said, swinging his pistol in her direction. Jenn froze while everyone else seemed to leap into action. Mike fired his crossbow hitting Everett dead center in the chest—Everett grimaced and fired his pistol three times; the first shot splitting the air between Mike and William, the second punched a hole high up in William’s chest and the third passed so close under Jenn’s chin that it actually tickled her.
She was too horrified to laugh and too shocked to move; the crossbow sat uselessly in her hands. She had to actively will herself to aim it. Before she could, Stu’s hand went to his hip in a flash. He drew his .357 and fired his only three rounds. Compared to Everett’s gun, the .357 sounded like a cannon. The dim foyer lit up with the flashes of his gun. It was like a strobe light and within the pulses of yellow, Jenn saw three men go down, one screaming and holding his face.
Somewhere in between those flashes someone had fired a feathered bolt at Stu. It seemed to magically appear sticking out of his chest.
Another bolt sailed through the air and stabbed the door next to her face—this finally got her moving. She dropped into a crouch, bringing her crossbow to bear. The foyer was a tiny battlefield with the combatants not ten paces from each other. As she was at one end, she had an excellent view. On one side Mike was dragging William up the stairs, while Stu, ignoring the bolt sticking out of his chest, was trying to pull his M4 from his back only it was hung up on his pack.
On the other side, four men were down, two were scrambling into the sitting room and the last had flung aside his spent crossbow and was digging a gun from a hip holster. Their eyes met as Jenn centered her sights on his chest. He dove away just as she fired. Her bolt transfixed his shoulder, knocking him back, but not killing him. With a scream of rage, he pulled the gun.
Jenn dropped her crossbow and scrambled out the door, where the cold sucked away her heat. She didn’t feel it. She was too frightened although now she wasn’t afraid for herself. Stu was almost a sitting duck. He would never get the rifle off his back or escape up the stairs before the man she had hit in the shoulder killed him.
Her own rifle was tightly strapped and had to be ignored at least for the moment. Looking around, she saw Stu’s crossbow, cocked and ready to go. Next to it was a planter with a few brown stems poking up out of the dry dirt. She grabbed it and hurled it through the sitting room window with a great crash of glass. The man fired three booming shots at the window, punching little holes through the blankets they had been using as blackout curtains.
“Missed me, jerk!” she yelled at the crack of the door before kicking it all the way open. She ducked away as he fired twice more, this time out into the night. Jenn was just about to say something else when she heard a roar from behind her. She turned to see monsters converging out of the snow, stomping towards her from three directions.
She was essentially trapped, with her only option being to step back into the house where she would most certainly be shot. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the man would be a good enough shot to kill her right off the bat. Perhaps a head shot where she would feel an instant of pain and then be gone forever.
With her bad luck she would be gut shot before being eaten alive. Still, she had no choice but to go through the front door—the timing had to be perfect. She grabbed the doorjamb to keep herself from flying inside too early as the first zombie hit the porch stairs. It fell, but it fell forward, reaching for Jenn with a stump that ended in shards of bone jutting like a pair of spears from its forearm.
Jenn counted to three and then raced through the doorway keeping so low that she could, and did, use her hands to keep her balance and propel herself along as a monkey would. A bullet scorched the air above her head and she couldn’t tell if it was aimed at her or at the zombie charging after. The thing was huge, even bent over it took up the entire doorway and then some. Its shoulders were so wide that grey diseased flesh tore off as it heedlessly came after her.
More bullets flew past Jenn, thudding into the dead meat of the monster’s flesh. She could hear the wet slap as each struck home. The power in those slugs would have killed a man, but the zombie didn’t even slow down. The only things that affected the creature were the flashes of light and the explosions coming from the gun.
To the zombie, the girl, small to begin with, was a blur in the darkness, while the gun blossomed great yellow flowers. It turned to charge the man with the gun, but it tripped on the sprawled bodies of Everett and the others. This only slowed it for a second and it crawled ravenously onward on all fours.
The man fired once more before the beast was on him. Jenn reached Stu at the same time. He had been simultaneously kicking backwards and struggling to get the M4 off his back. Jenn grabbed him and held him in a crushing hug, pinning his arms just as a second zombie rushed inside.
The two, looking like a dark hump in a murky hall, were overlooked by that second zombie and by the third, both of which went to feast on the screaming man. The next one to enter, did not. The screams were now little more than grunts of pain. Most of his throat had been torn out and he was seconds from death.
On some strange level, the last zombie to come into the house seemed to know this. It turned away and stared around at the bodies. Zombies didn’t like to eat the dead. No one knew why, but they preferred their meat hot and bloody, preferably still screaming.
The beast reached down, picked up Everett and gave him a shake. When the corpse just hung, rag-like, the zombie tossed it aside and reached for another.
“Now,” Stu whispered. Jenn jumped up, hauling him to his feet and then was running down the hall towards the kitchen as fast as she could. There was a doorway on her left which led to a study and one on her right which was so dark she had no idea what was in there.
She barely gave it a glance and didn’t see the man charging out of it until it was too late. The two slammed into each other, the force sending them both sprawling. A second man wearing a look of sheer horror on his sweaty face appeared in the doorway, hesitated, and then tried to clamber over Jenn to get away from the zombie that was now lunging down the hall. In the dark it looked and sounded like a demon and Jenn was sure it was going to eat her and drag her soul to hell.
Desperately, she tried to get up, only to have her leg kicked out from under her by the man she had run into. He was flailing like mad to get away, as was his friend. Jenn would be left behind. It was survival of the fittest and she was small and weak.
Stu didn’t live by that credo He was in the very back of the pileup and with the zombie bearing down, he grabbed one of the men by his jacket and heaved him around, flinging him bodily at the creature. The two came together with a screech and a roar, and right before their eyes, the man was torn limb from limb.
The zombie’s strength was so shocking that the three people were slow to take flight. They backed up, untwining themselves, panting high in their throats. It was only when the beast tossed aside a still bleeding arm that they turned and rushed into the kitchen where they were trapped. There was a back door but was it locked? Were there zombies beyond it attracted by the screams and gunshots?
All three looked at it, hesitated and then passed. Jenn and Stu ran to a pantry. The man tried to get in with them, but Stu shoved him out. “Find somewhere else,” he hissed, pulling the .357 out and shoving it in the man’s face. It was empty, but the man didn’t know that. He only saw the huge bore and smelled the spent powder. He fled into a laundry room just as the zombie pushed open the swinging door that led to the hall, leaving a bloody hand print.
Stu had been struggling the M4 from his back and now stopped with the strap across his forehead. The two of them froze in place and too late saw that the pantry door had somehow swung open half a foot. Stu reached out for it only to have Jenn grab his hand. The door would have to stay open. They couldn’t chance it. Movement and sound attracted the beasts.
Jenn couldn’t even chance pulling her M4 from her back. The only
thing they could do was ease Stu’s rifle from the odd position it was in.
Through the gap in the door they saw the zombie plod slowly through the kitchen, walking into the counters, bumping off the table and jingling the chandelier as it knocked it with its head. Jenn found it strange that this dull, vacant-eyed creature was the same rage-filled monster of only a few seconds before.
Moaning softly, it turned slow racetracks around the room as if looking for the way out. It went in circles for ten minutes before it stopped, staring at the kitchen sink with all the intelligence of a phone booth.
It was going to be a long wait, hours maybe.
Jenn helped Stu get his pack off and then turned to allow him to help her with her gun and pack. Then they settled down, their backs to the dusty pantry shelves, their legs splayed out in front of them.
Their wait wasn’t as long as they thought it would be. From above, there came the sound of soft steps and a creak of wood. This woke the zombie up and once more it began to walk in circles. The sound of the steps continued and now they could hear the beasts in the front of the house stirring.
Then all at once there was a loud scraping from above them. Someone was moving furniture! Jenn and Stu leapt to their feet as the zombie stormed out of the room. They followed it to the swinging door and peeked out as something crashed in the front of the house. It was a dresser being heaved down the front stairs.
The dull-eyed zombies were in full rage and charged the stairs but the dresser, caught halfway down, stopped them. The beast in front tore at the piece of furniture, ripping off chunks of wood with its bare hands. It was in full roar when it suddenly dropped, turning from a monster to a soft pile of grey flesh, a crossbow bolt sticking out of its eye.
It was pulled aside by the next beast, who mindlessly attacked the dresser. It took three shots to kill this one. When it died, the dresser slid into the next zombie. Now there were only two left.
“Cover me,” Stu said, pulling his climber’s axe from his belt. With Jenn right behind him, he crept up on the last beast and whammed the pick right into the back of its head. It jerked around so quickly that the axe was yanked from Stu’s grip. He jumped back, banging into Jenn. The two would have been in trouble if the beast attacked. It only stood there, blinking slowly as black blood dribbled down its back, forming a puddle beneath it.
Stu and Jenn didn’t know what to do about it and were still standing there when a bolt sunk four inches deep into its temple. They both jumped a little as it crumpled to the floor.
“Help me with William!” Mike demanded from midway up the stairs. His coat was smeared with blood; in the dark it looked black and oily.
Jenn started forward only to be stopped by Stu. “Go get that last guy. Don’t let him close on you. Shoot him first.”
She hefted her rifle to her shoulder and stalked down the hall, stepping over bodies and leaving a trail in the blood. The last of Everett’s men hadn’t budged from the laundry room. She could hear his breathing. He sounded like an over-worked poodle.
“Get on out of there,” she ordered, standing behind the counter, her elbows resting on the granite countertop. “They’re all dead, including all your friends.”
“They weren’t my friends.”
She found that hard to believe. “Whatever. Get your butt out here now! With your hands up, too.” She had never held a gun on a criminal before. It was a strange feeling. As self-righteous as she felt, she didn’t know if she could pull the trigger.
“Hi,” he said, with a boyish wave of one of his lifted hands. “My name’s Kevin. I-I didn’t do anything wrong. You gotta understand, I only went along with them because I was sick and they were saying they were going to take all the medicine.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to steal from everyone.” He started to reply; she cut him off, snapping, “Shut up and get moving.” She walked him out into the hallway where he gaped at the blood and the bodies. He was still staring when Stu and Mike carried William down the stairs.
“Clear a spot by the fire!” Stu yelled.
Jenn jabbed the M4 into Kevin’s spine. He might have been sick, but he was still much bigger than Jenn. When he had cleared a spot, she ordered him to haul the medicine over to where William was lying. For the most part this consisted of four cardboard boxes of various pills.
Stu began reading the labels, one after another, while Mike knelt next to William with a frightened look on his young face. Jenn found it strange that eight-foot tall zombies and a room full of thieves didn’t seem to scare him, but a little hole in a man had him sweating and nervously licking his lips.
“Anyone know what to do?” he asked.
“You put pressure on the wound,” Kevin said, pointing at the bleeding hole high up on William’s chest.
Mike and Stu glanced at each other, each shrugging. Mike leaned over William and pressed down with both hands locked. Seconds later William opened his eyes and Mike looked hopeful.
“Can’t…breathe,” William whispered.
Mike leapt back. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. What can I do? How can we make this better?” William shook his head, closing his eyes again. This seemed like a bad thing to Mike. “Hey, Will. Look at me. Stay with me.” William cracked his eyes and nodded.
“I have some pain meds,” Stu said, handing Mike a white bottle. “Have him take two of them.” It was such an effort to get William into a sitting position and for him to swallow the pills that it didn’t seem worth it, especially as he could barely summon the energy to open his eyes after.
They had a thousand different pills, but really nothing that would help someone who’d been shot. “We need a doctor,” Stu said.
To Jenn, doctors weren’t a real thing. She knew they had existed before, but now, if she had known the word extinct, she would have placed both doctors and dinosaurs in that same category. The closest thing to a doctor that she had ever heard of was the dentist who used to travel with the traders years before—he had become fabulously wealthy and was stabbed in his sleep by a slave girl who had made off with his riches.
Jenn believed it was more likely she would run into a tyrannosaurus rex than a doctor, but it did remind her. “Weren’t you shot?” She pointed at the bolt sticking out of Stu’s coat.
They all stared. Even William opened his eyes as Stu looked down at himself with sudden worry.
Chapter 18
Stu Currans
He hadn’t noticed it before in all the action, but now he felt a sting across his chest. Having never been shot by a bullet or a bolt before, he expected the pain to be worse. Slowly he unzipped and unbuttoned the layers he had put on to keep warm until he came to the last and saw the blood.
There was very little. He let out a shaky laugh. “I got shot right in the coat. It’s only a scratch.” He pulled the bolt out and was about to toss it aside, then thought better of it. They needed every bit of ammo they could lay their hands on. William was still alive but he wouldn’t be for long if they couldn’t get him in capable hands—the closest being the Coven.
But what could they do? Probably nothing.
“Jenn, keep an eye on that guy. Mike, watch over William. Check his, uh pulse or something. I’m going to see if these guys had anything besides meds.”
“We had a few guns and some bullets,” Kevin said, wearing a miserable smile, perhaps hoping to appear pleasing in some way. It made Stu want to punch him in the face. He deserved it; that and more. At a minimum, Kevin had been part of thievery on a grand scale, armed robbery and attempted murder. For all Stu knew he had been more than just a “part” of it. He might have masterminded the theft. Not that the sniveling hunk of crap looked like much of a mastermind.
Stu went through the packs and found very little that was useful: a pound of dried jerky, some rope, a few bullets, two handguns, three bottles of wine and a box of matches in a crinkled Ziplock. The rest of their possessions consisted of clothing and spank magazines.
He gathered what they we
re going to take by the door. “So, any idea how to move him?”
“We have a little cart out front,” Kevin said, with that same warped smile. “It won’t carry your friend but it’ll carry everything else.”
“Move him? Are we really going to leave tonight?” Mike asked, jerking his head toward William and then giving Stu a significant look. Clearly Mike thought that moving William would kill him and he was probably right. “Maybe we should wait until morning.”
While it was usually more dangerous traveling at night, Stu couldn’t imagine trying to make it back to the boat in daylight while hauling a cart and carrying William. They would need flat, unbroken ground and that meant walking straight down the highway where there wasn’t a lick of cover, and when they were spotted by zombies, they would have no choice but to leave William behind when they ran for safety.
Their only real choice was to travel at night where the snow and the cold of the night could kill him.
It was a decision he wished he didn’t have to make. Thankfully, Jenn said, “It’s bad luck to stay in the house of the dead.”
That was all it took to get them all on board to leave as soon as possible. Even Kevin happily agreed. Stu glared at him. “I don’t know why you’re so chirpy. You’re coming with us. You have to face up to what you did.”
He went white. “But…but they’ll kill me. If I go back they’ll kill me. Don’t you see that? H-How about this? I’ll help you lug your stuff. You brought a boat, right? I’ll help you lug your stuff to your boat and then you let me go. That’s punishment right there if you ask me. All alone with nothing. Don’t you think that’s punishment enough? It’ll be the same as banishment.”
Stu started to shake his head, but Mike held up a hand. “It’s not a terrible idea. It saves everyone the headache of a trial and we can keep all the meds.”
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