by TW Brown
I reached the second one and drove my blade into its open mouth, angling up and punching through the roof of its mouth. Unfortunately, it fell, taking my knife with it, but I still had another machete and came around to finish the one Chewie had knocked over. It had enough time to make a hissing sound before I chopped down and buried my machete into the forehead of the child monster. I spun and plunged the point of my weapon’s sturdy blade into the back of the head of the zombie mauling Toby. I kicked it away as Darya shoved past me and knelt over the boy.
I didn’t need to see more than the glimpse I’d gotten. The little boy had a chunk torn from his shoulder, and blood was gushing from the wound. I doubted he would live long enough for his eyes to show the symptoms. His screams were not letting up, and he was thrashing against his mother who kept trying to soothe and comfort him to no avail.
Chewie barked once and took off again. I turned to see where she was dashing to and caught sight of Michael standing at the edge of the playground all by himself. His expression gave no hint that he was even remotely aware of what was happening around him.
“Evan!” Alex screamed from behind me.
I turned to see another dozen of the undead stumble through the bushes and into the playground that had quickly turned into a killing field. I could hear moans from someplace off to my right and left. That meant we were now some sort of bullseye for every zombie in who knows how much of a radius.
What I knew for sure was that we could not keep this up. When I found Rickey and Marshawn, they were back-to-back and fighting off several of the child and adult versions. Even in that quick glance, I noticed that Rickey was focused on the adult versions and seemed to skim right past the child zombies. He’d also lost his headsman’s axe someplace and was now wielding a very plain looking machete.
I looked around, but couldn’t see anyplace close that we could run to with the exception of one. The building where the little girl had emerged.
“Everybody follow me!” I shouted.
I didn’t wait to see if anybody followed, I sprinted for Michael. By the time I reached him, he already had Chewie’s leash and appeared to be waiting for me.
“C’mon, Michael,” I said, reaching down for his hand to lead him to what I hoped would be someplace safe for a while.
I started for the scene of carnage waiting on the back patio of the condo where the little girl I’d basically allowed to be brutally killed had emerged. The dead bodies everywhere did not begin to paint the picture of the terrible things that had just occurred.
“You saved Chewie,” Michael said as we rushed past the little girl’s body. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what exactly he was apologizing for, but I could hear the choked sound of a near sob in his voice. Was it possible that he understood what had happened here? Also, where had he been while this took place? My one solace was that this would be my own personal guilt. How would the others react if they’d seen what I’d done?
I stepped into what had once been the dining room. What had probably been a pretty fancy dining room table was broken into several pieces. It looked like somebody had flipped it over and busted off the legs.
The smell hit me at the same time the middle-aged man with his guts hanging from the savage rip in his once protruding belly came around the corner of the entrance to this area from what looked to be the living room. His low moan was so deep that it felt like my teeth vibrated. I pulled free from Michael and stepped in to cleave the man’s head, but I hadn’t taken my surroundings into account.
My machete slammed into an overhead lighting fixture that was supposed to look like a bunch of brass candle holders. The crash was tremendous, and also enough to elicit even more moans from what I had to assume were the rest of the family lurking someplace inside the condo.
Something collided with my back and I found myself sprawling into the open kitchen to my right. Even worse was discovering what looked like a two-year-old staring at me from where he sat in the corner, his milky, tracer-riddled eyes gazing into my own as his mouth opened and a dark stream of drool dribbled down his chin. He made no move toward me as I lay on my stomach, staring him in those milky, horrible eyes.
“Evan?” Marshawn’s voice said from close by, letting me have a good idea who’d just slammed into me.
“Umm…yeah,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
“What are you d—” he started to ask, but his words cut off suddenly. No doubt he was able to see what I was seeing.
I heard a moan, and then a heavy, wet thud as somebody obviously finished off the zombie that had been coming into the dining room. Marshawn moved past me and stuck his knife in the top of the little child’s head. I swore that, in the seconds before it was put down, it glanced up at the knife and started to moan or make some sort of zombie noise. But a split second before that, I was almost positive that I saw…fear? Surprise?
The sound of the sliding glass door came right on the heels of what sounded like Darya and Toby crowding into the dining room. I got up and did a quick head count. Six plus Chewie meant that everybody was present and accounted for.
I got up and was almost to my feet when Darya launched herself at me. “This is all your fault!” she screamed as she came at me with hands like claws.
I barely staggered back enough to avoid her attack. She tripped over her feet and some of the remnants of the table still scattered on the floor. She hit hard and I heard her make a pained sound that cut off her ranting…at least for the moment.
“Whoa!” Rickey barked, catching her by the collar as she scrambled to her hands and knees and tried to come at me again.
“My son…” her voice died out, replaced by hitching sobs. I swear I could feel her grief pouring from her in waves of heat that plunged flaming daggers of guilt into my heart.
I turned to the heap on the floor and could see a pool of blood already spreading under him and darkening the hardwood floor. Chewie was standing over the small figure, sniffing around his head.
“Get that animal away from my Toby.” Darya shoved past everybody and shooed my big Newfie away.
Michael hurried to the big dog and whispered something in her ear as he led her away. I wanted to tell Darya that Chewie wouldn’t hurt her son, but this wasn’t the time to be confrontational.
“He’s going to turn,” a voice breathed in my ear. I glanced over to see Alex standing beside me, her expression almost completely blank.
“You all stay away from him,” Darya spat. She locked eyes with each of us one at a time, almost daring any of us to challenge her.
“Look at his eyes.” Alex stepped forward, apparently undaunted by the angry mom who now hunched over her son, his head in her arms as she brushed his hair from his face.
“Toby is gonna be one of the monster people, huh?” Michael said, his voice seeming uncommonly loud in that moment of silence.
“All of you stay away!” Darya repeated.
She scooted back against a wall and hauled her son with her. She pulled him around so that he was in her lap and she could look down at his face.
Now that I could see him better, I noticed the unnatural paleness of his skin. His eyes were closed, squeezed tight against the pain. But as I watched, I saw that tightness start to lessen. His breathing got shallow and rapid. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Marshawn had drawn the knife he’d just sheathed, and Rickey had backed up a few steps.
Even Michael had turned his head slightly and looked to be watching the other little boy out of the corner of his eye and Chewie was standing between Michael and Toby like a furry, black wall. The only person who did not seem to notice was Darya.
“Sweetie,” Tracy whispered, stepping toward the mother and child with her hands out and open in a placating gesture, “I think you need to let me help you.”
“You stay back, too!” Darya spat.
I was suddenly very thankful that she’d dropped her gun. I had no doubt she would be waving it around at us if not just opening
fire; namely at me.
There was a heartbeat or two where we all just stood there, nobody seeming to know what to do. Darya continued to hold and rock her son. And then it started.
First it was one leg beginning to twitch. That twitch spread to both legs and then Toby’s entire body began to convulse with violent spasms.
“Baby…no…sweetie…Toby, honey…” Darya started sobbing as she sought to give comfort to her child.
There was nothing she could do, but none of us could tell her that as her son’s spasms continued for what felt like an eternity. Then, he arched up, his back bowing in an impossible curve. I felt like I should hear bones popping. But just as fast as it began, it ended and he collapsed in a heap with a rattling, wheezing exhale that sounded exactly what you would think a death rattle should sound like.
Part of me wanted to jerk that child’s body from his mother’s arms and put a spike in his head. Only…I was frozen. Not from fear. I think it was more sorrow than anything else. I was still trying to decide what to do when I saw the little boy’s eyelids flutter and then open.
“Evan?” Alex hissed.
“What?” I shot back, perhaps a bit angrier than I meant to sound as all the stress and tension building in me came out in that one word.
“Kill it.”
Two simple words.
I turned to her. She wasn’t looking at me. Alex had her eyes locked on the mother and son. I could see the knot undulating in her cheek from where she was clenching her teeth so tight.
Darya’s sobs were suddenly muffled, and I looked back to see that she’d buried her face in her son’s chest. Her shoulders shook as she cried, but that wasn’t where my eyes locked. It was a single twitch. Just a single finger.
I took a step forward, my gaze locked on the one hand when I saw a second flexing, this time it was all the fingers. They flexed and then closed into a tiny fist. Darya didn’t seem to notice as she continued to cry.
“Darya,” I whispered. “You need to come here.”
She didn’t respond at all. But Toby did. His legs began to move almost like he was trying to ride a bicycle, but very jerky and uncoordinated.
“This isn’t going to happen,” I heard somebody say from behind me.
I felt a hand ease me aside, and Tracy moved to Darya, grabbing her under one arm. The grieving mother lifted her head and stared up at the woman trying to get her to move, but it was immediately clear that she wasn’t seeing anything. Her eyes had that distant, unfocused look to them.
I saw that little hand open and the arm start to raise. That was also when I was finally able to see Toby’s face. It was pale, the skin slack. His cheeks that had still held a trace of baby fat had sagged to become jowls. His lips were twitching a bit and his mouth opened just enough so that I could see his teeth and a sickening looking gray tongue that swiped back and forth.
“Toby?” Darya looked down and saw her son moving in her arms. “Baby, it’s mama.”
Toby’s eyes opened. The pus-colored film was an ugly yellowish color and the black tracers were stark in contrast. There was no doubt as to the condition of the boy. Yet, despite the obvious condition of the child, his mother held him in her arms. When he opened his mouth and let loose with a deep moan, that was enough to propel me into action. I stepped forward; my intention was to grab the woman and jerk her away from the creature that was no longer her son.
“Don’t touch me,” Darya hissed, leaning back away from me.
I ignored her, my eyes watching as Toby’s gaze shifted to me. He opened his mouth again and moaned even louder.
In my mind’s eye, I saw how this would play out. It was almost too cliché. The grieving mother refusing to accept the horrible reality of her child’s fate. The child would sink his teeth into her and then we would have to kill them both.
Tracy obviously saw the same thing that I did and lunged to grab Darya away from the zombie child. Darya moved faster. She had a blade in her hand in the blink of an eye and drove it into Toby’s eye socket before the child could turn back to her.
“This is your fault.” Darya pulled the weapon free, wiping the blade on the leg of her jeans and slipping the knife back into its sheath.
“How do you figure?” I shot back.
Personally, I was carrying an awful lot of blame already. Most of it was well-deserved. What I wasn’t going to do was willingly shoulder more that didn’t belong to me.
“You and your people came barging into our little secure area. You brought zombies on your heels and ruined everything we’d set up.” She hugged her dead child close. “My baby had a nice, safe room in the basement of our house. We had a good thing going.”
“Umm…yeah, that’s bullshit,” I said with a tired sigh. “You and your people were trying to hold out in the middle of what had been a densely populated neighborhood full of zombies. We were being chased by living raiders. You attacked us first. Maybe if you and your people would’ve just stayed low and let us pass, we wouldn’t even know you were there. But noooo, your people lobbed a freaking Molotov at us. And just an added bit of information for you to swallow… if you’d let us pass, chances are you would’ve met up with the people we were running from, and let me tell ya, you wouldn’t have liked that. I can assure you that your fate ends up much darker.”
Darya opened her mouth to say something, but I have no idea what it was because there was a loud crash behind me. I spun to see Rickey face down on the floor. That was also when I saw the rip on the back of left leg of his pants. There was a dark stain, and the material had started to become glued to his skin as the blood dried.
I hurried to him and rolled him onto his back. He was breathing heavy in short bursts. I was about to pry his eyelids open when he opened them himself very suddenly and made a wet gasping sound.
I skittered back solely out of the perfect combination of fear and surprise. His eyes told me everything I needed to know. The dark tracers were just now starting to spread from the corners. If you stared—which is exactly what I was doing at that moment—you could see them spread oh-so-slowly.
“Dammit,” I breathed.
“So…looks like I’m not one of the lucky ones,” the big man wheezed with a half-hearted laugh that ended in a fit of coughing.
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t see the need to. He knew what was up. His eyes flicked down to one of the knives I wore on my hip. He looked back up at me and pressed his lips tight. I wasn’t sure he was going to speak until he actually did.
“Soon as I give it up, you’ll put me down, right?” His eyes returned to my blade.
“Sure.” What else could I say?
We went through the house to make sure there were no nasty surprises. The last thing we needed to do was get careless. Once we were sure, we hoisted the heavier furniture to the sliding glass door, stacked it, and did our best to make sure it would hold up.
The front door was locked, and I managed to wedge a coffee table and love seat in the entry hall to ensure nothing came through that front door. Once that was done, we made Rickey comfortable in the upstairs master bedroom. The people who lived here drank some expensive, top-shelf booze. We brought him up a bottle of tequila that I’d never heard of before, but Marshawn assured me that it was pretty expensive stuff.
He nursed the bottle for about an hour and I sat beside the bed the entire time. As he drank himself into oblivion, we managed to have a decent conversation. He told me that I had to stop taking the blame for everything that goes wrong. I learned that he played bass in some local metal band, and that he was married.
Like me, he saw his wife turn, but things had progressed to the point where he knew what was happening, and so he actually waded into a small group of zombies to put her down. He said that part of him had hoped he’d be bitten then, that way he wouldn’t have to go on without her.
He said he changed his mind when he reached her and grabbed her. At that moment, he hadn’t been certain if he was going to put her down, or let h
er take him. He said he made up his mind when he looked into her eyes.
“She wasn’t there…at all. Whatever that thing was that looked a little like my baby…it wasn’t her. It was just some…thing. And that’s what all of them are…” His voice trailed off, and I thought he was done, but then he continued. “Except for the kids, man. Something’s seriously wrong with them. They don’t act like regular…monsters.” I had noticed that he’d stayed away from using the word zombie this entire time. “They look at you like they are trying to figure you out. They do stuff that ain’t normal for one of them things.”
I knew what he meant. I couldn’t help but look at the child versions of the zombies as something different. I just wasn’t the guy who was going to figure it out. “They hunt you, man.” Rickey’s voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t care what that girl was sayin’ about them just being one of the monsters, and how they weren’t no different. Don’t you believe that, brother.”
I guess I felt some sense of relief that I wasn’t the only person seeing that there was something about the child versions of the walking dead.
“And you gotta give yourself a break, man.” Rickey patted my arm. “I don’t know how you will keep the group together, but you gotta try. Nobody was ready for this. Stop beating yourself up if something doesn’t go exactly as planned. There ain’t no right answers. And…”
Once more, his voice just faded out. I looked over to see if maybe he’d finally passed, but he was looking up at the ceiling, and there were tears in his eyes that reflected the light of the portable, battery-powered lantern we’d found in the garage while we were searching this place.
I sat quietly, waiting to see if he would add anything else to his statement, but he was done. After another long pull from the bottle that drained the last of its contents, Rickey Lipinski closed his eyes. His breathing got fast, then it slowed way down. Finally, after one deep inhale…he just stopped living.