by Fuchs, A. P.
Joe put his head to the door, listening before moving to the wood over the window.
“Think we should—” Des said again but was cut off when Joe raised his hand, hushing him.
Thwump, thwump, thwump! Thwump, thwump, thwump!
THOOM!
Joe unchained the door and held the long handle that stretched across it with both hands.
“April?” he said. The dog came up beside him. “Someone there?”
April stared at the door long and hard then shifted her gaze toward him.
“Anyone?”
She didn’t give any sign someone was waiting for them on the other side.
Thwump, thwump, thwump, THWACK!
All turned their eyes toward the boards covering the front door on the other end of the hallway. A black crack zigzagged up its flank.
“Okay, that’s good. Let’s go!” Des said.
“Billie,” Joe said, his voice dark, commanding. She couldn’t help but step up to him. “Open the door when I say, then hold it open for Des, April and I to come out. Then when I say, come out and join us. Good?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said and pulled out his gun. He cocked the hammer. “Des, I want you right behind me, keeping an eye looking back this way.” To April: “Wanna go outside?”
April’s tail wagged side to side in a blur.
Joe kept his eyes fixed on the door. “Okay, Billie. Now.”
She opened the door.
THWACK! THWACK! CRACCCKKK!
The droning growls and grunts of the dead filled the air as several of them tried to pile through the hole in the board at the front all at once. One got through but was shoved over by its comrades and fell face forward so its body was half-in-half-out of the building.
Their mouths were wide open and it sounded as if they were barking, like rabid dogs eager to take a chunk out of a person.
Joe quickly stepped out . . . into an empty parking lot. April padded a few feet past him. The look on Des’s face told Billie the coast was clear.
“Billie?” Joe said.
She came out and closed the door behind her, muffling the shrieks and growls of the undead coming into the building. “They’ll be here any second!”
The three ran the length of the parking lot to the back alley. April stopped where the lot met the road and the hairs on the back of her neck shot upward. Barking, she turned to face Joe then turned her head side to side, as if she didn’t know what to do. Joe was beside her in no time. Billie tugged on the back of Des’s shirt as he ran past her.
“Hey!” he said.
“Hang on a sec,” she said.
Joe turned around. “We’re in big trouble.”
* * * *
Zombies coated the alley, both up and down. Legions of them, filling the alley like blood in an artery.
Joe never expected so many to come to the Haven. He, like everyone, thought they either didn’t know about it or were satisfied with what they had everywhere else in the city.
April barked and barked, but soon the groans from the undead horde forced her snapping to a whimper.
“It’s okay, April,” he said. But it wasn’t okay, at least, not in the way he would like. Before, it was just himself he had to look after. April always stayed home and only went out to do her business. Now it was him, April and two others. Billie and Des had done all right holding their own against the creatures, but eventually they needed him to save them. April had never fought off a zombie before. He didn’t know if they’d infect her or not, but judging by the news of altered rats, odds were April would become one of them if she got bit or tore out a chunk of them for herself. And for a dog, its teeth and mouth were its main defense.
“April, stay,” he said. She remained by his feet.
“Joe?” Billie said from behind.
The house across the way was bordered by a fence. They’d run across the alley, hop the fence and, hopefully, make it clear to safety on the other side.
“One sec,” he said and shot across the alley. He peeked over the fence. Four undead were drifting into the yard with a couple others following behind.
Still, six was better than the ninety or so coming toward them from either side.
“Over the fence, the both of you. April!” April bounded toward him. He picked her up and tossed her over the fence before hopping over himself.
Des and Billie were right behind. Billie shrieked.
“No!” Des shouted and disappeared back into the alley. “Get off her!”
Joe blasted the heads off two of the zombies in the yard, cocked the hammer again, then took the heads off two more. He reloaded a third time and took out the remaining two.
Wood creaked and groaned; the old fence wasn’t holding from the weight of the bodies pressing against it from the other side.
“Billie!” Joe shouted. I’m calling her first! “Des!”
More groaning, at first a singular voice then a choir. The undead began pouring into the yard.
A girl shrieked and Joe turned to see Billie’s body dumped over the top of the fence. April ran over to her and began sniffing. Joe ran over to her, too. Before he could check her over, the whole fence began leaning toward him. He grabbed her by the hand and dragged her away just as the fence fell inward.
The undead lined the street beyond.
Des was nowhere to be seen.
Coughing. Someone was cough—Billie!
She spat up a spurt of blood and forced herself into a sitting position. Joe fired off a couple of shots into the faces of two undead that had almost snuck up on them.
“You need to get up,” Joe told her.
April growled.
Billie nodded and he helped her to her feet.
She was shaky on her legs once she stood, but Joe thought she’d manage just fine if she had another second or two to collect herself.
“Somethin’ chipped a tooth,” she said and spat a wad of blood down beside her feet.
BANG! BANG! Joe took out two more.
They were surrounded, the undead coming in from the front and back. Maybe the side yards would . . . . A zombie fell over the top of the fence from the yard to the right.
“That way,” Joe said, pointing toward the fence on the left.
They ran toward it, reaching it just as the fence that separated the yard from the alley fell in and a horde of the dead came in like a tidal wave. The others that came from the front end of the house were upon them.
Joe socked one in the face with his gun and kicked another in the head. He reached down, picked up April, and when he straightened, an old and fat man of a zombie stood beside him, hunger in his eyes. He eyed the dog like a fatted calf and ripped April from his arms faster than Joe thought any zombie could ever move. As Joe reached for the dog, the porker of a man plowed his face into April’s gut and jerked his head back, taking a huge hunk of fur-covered flesh with it.
“APRRIIIILLLL!” Joe screamed and sent two bullets into the fat man’s face.
The dude dropped the dog then fell to his knees. Joe sent a steel-toed boot into the side of the man’s head and kicked off the top portion of his already bullet-cracked skull, sending bone and brain matter flying into the air.
April’s body lay there, her chest rising slowly up and down, her dark eyes staring forward, her gaze wet and lost.
“Joe!” Billie shouted.
Heart breaking, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, Joe cocked the hammer and fired off as many shots as he could until the X-09 clicked and clicked, and there was nothing left.
Growling, he turned to Billie. “What!”
But Billie was gone.
14
And the Dead Keep on Coming
“Oh no,” Joe breathed. He scanned the sea of dead heads and couldn’t see Billie anywhere.
An undead lady with auburn hair took a swipe at him. The blow connected with his cheekbone and sent him staggering to the side. She thrust both arms toward his shoulders, presumably
to take a chunk out of his neck, but Joe dropped, rolled, got to his feet and reloaded the X-09. With a quick cock of the hammer and pull of the trigger, he sent her on a permanent dirt nap.
The dead surrounded him, pawing at him as one, grubby fingers pulling at his arms, his legs, some poking him in the ribs.
He hook punched one, sent a knee into another, kicked the shins out from under another one and fired off a shot into the face of a toddler. Another went into the face of a man he recognized as a former survivor of the rain who had become one of them. He didn’t know the guy’s name but had seen him around. Cocking the hammer and shoving the creatures off himself, he spun in a circle and put a bullet into anything that moved.
Crrunnch!
Joe looked down and winced when he saw the heel of his boot standing on April’s rear paw.
Sorry, girl, he thought, I didn’t mean . . . He made a mad dash through the horde of the dead, plowing through them like a linebacker making a beeline for the goal.
He cleared through a swarm of them, turned, and fired off as many shots as he could in the little time he had before more came through the broken glass of the sliding door that led onto the patio at the rear of the house.
Far to his left was the gate that led out to the front of the house. From what he could see, none of the dead were on the other side. That could change any moment.
Pulling the trigger of the X-09, he removed the heads off two more dead men then, with another cock of the hammer, took the faces off one woman and one teenage boy.
Joe ran for the gate.
* * * *
Gray fingers streaked with red scratches pawed at Billie from the far side of the patio deck. She was beneath it, having rolled under there the second the pack of zombies had gotten too thick for her to get to Joe’s side.
She lay tightly where the deck met the house. The pebbled ground beneath her smelled of rot and soil that hadn’t seen the sun and a real rain in a year.
Some of the undead on the other end of the deck and at the sides merely bent at the waist and tried to reach in, the deck stopping them at the elbows. Others were smart enough to get on their knees and try reaching her that way. Yet others had somehow realized that the only way to get to her was to get on the ground themselves and crawl army-style.
The sides were blocked as was the front, with nothing but stuccoed cement behind.
She was trapped.
A bald zombie with a dent on the left side of his head clawed toward her, its grimy fingers digging into the pebbles; the stones came loose, slowing his advance. It stared at her with droopy, bloodshot eyes, the snarl upon its face enough to produce tears in hers.
Billie screamed.
* * * *
The groaning of the undead filled the air like an angry wind, the sound so thick that Joe was having a hard time thinking of a plan should more of the creatures be on the other side of the fence.
A high-pitched “something” floated toward his ears but was quickly silenced by the undead advancing toward him.
He fired off a couple more shots; two bodies dropped, acting as speed bumps for the rest following behind. It’d buy him a few extra moments and a few extra feet of distance.
Once at the fence, he peeked over the top and was relieved to see only a few zombies on either side, far enough down the street to not pose any immediate threat. He was about to hop over, but stopped himself.
Coward. You just lost three people. Two, but April . . . . April. A picture of his dead dog lying there, insides ripped open, blood pooling around her body, flashed before his mind’s eye then quickly changed to his April, the girl with the black hair and gray eyes, lying dead at his feet after he accidentally struck her with a rolling pin.
A woman screamed.
He turned and a forty-something woman with gray-green skin, rotted in places, lunged for him. He took hold of her by the ears, her head thrashing side to side as she tried to take a bite out of his wrists. He snapped her head around. Her body dropped.
Another scream, this one clean and not garbled like those of the undead.
“Billie,” he said.
* * * *
Billie slammed her heel into the monster’s face, breaking its nose and sending it a few inches back. Panting, heart beating so hard the pulse raced up and down her arms, she scrambled toward the side of the deck with the least amount of creatures, hoping against hope they wouldn’t suddenly get down on the ground, too, and come after her.
BOOMBRACK! BOOMBRACK! BOOMBRACK!
The entire deck shook. Wood snapped above her.
She covered her face as splinters and dust rained down.
BOOMBRACK! BOOMBRACK!
Above, two burly undead men worked together and smashed a white propane tank into the deck over and over.
BOOMBRACK!
Punching through, they tossed the tank aside and reached in; four meaty hands that smelled of old fish reached for her. Two hands had her by the collar, one by her hair, another under her chin.
“Ah! Help! No!” she shrieked.
The arms yanked her up toward the hole just as the bald zombie on its belly grabbed her ankle. There was a quick tug of war then she was jerked clear of the floorboards, the sides of her body crying out when sharp points of wood ripped along her skin. She felt everything from her armpits to her waist go wet.
Two huge heads, one bearded, one not, sped toward hers.
This was it. She was going to die.
Billie closed her eyes.
BOOM! BOOM!
Gravity kicked on full swing and wind whistled past her ears as the two behemoths dragged her down. She landed atop their massive, spongy bodies, getting a full whiff of decayed flesh. She immediately threw up, sour peaches pinching her throat.
A pair of strong hands reached under her arms, pulled her up and planted her on her feet.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Joe staring back at her.
“Let’s go,” he said and shot two more zombies. He cocked the hammer and took down another two.
“Wh-where . . .” she said, her voice cracking.
There was no way off the deck. The undead moved toward them in an unstoppable horde. Getting through would be impossible.
A violent jerk to her arm pulled her through the patio door of the house and before it even registered she was standing in somebody’s kitchen, four more creatures came walking in. Joe dropped two of them then was pushed to the side when one came at him while he was doing something with his gun.
Another was coming for her. The guy grabbed her hair, pulling on the already-sensitive strands so hard she thought he’d rip them clean off her skull. She scrambled for something to latch onto and the only thing her fingers found was a metal kitchen chair. Its legs rumbled as she pulled it across the linoleum. The undead man moved in, mouth wide, and she swung the chair to the side, slamming it into the zombie’s leg. The man fell to his knees.
Suddenly filled with a renewed sense of rage, she picked up the chair and brought the bottom two legs across the dead man’s face. Black-red welts immediately streaked the guy’s skin.
More came in through the patio door. Billie hurled the chair at them then instinctively ducked when more shots rang out.
The next thing she knew, Joe was beside her, dragging her along as they darted out of the kitchen and into the living room beyond.
“Stay beside me!” he said.
She thought it was a weird thing to say but soon realized it was for her protection. If she was behind, the dead could get her. If she was in front, she’d be acting as a shield for him, which was something he obviously didn’t want.
At the front door, Joe went to unlock it then paused—it was already unlocked.
“Hmph.” He opened the door.
He shoved open the wind door beyond and the two took the steps in one jump.
The dead appeared in the doorway behind them.
More were coming up the driveway.
Joe led the way, zigzagging around th
e dead so quickly Billie felt as if she were waterskiing, the driver of the boat a maniac who was trying to dump her. Left, right, back, side, other side, forward, back, right, back, left, front—she could scarcely breathe.
BOOM! BOOM! Joe dropped another pair of creatures.
They didn’t stop running till they reached the end of the street.
* * * *
Joe stood with his hands on his hips, staring off down the street as Billie stood beside him, bent at the waist, wheezing.
“Breathe slow. Panting will only make it worse,” he said.
“I got a stitch in my side sharper than a freakin’ dagger and . . .” There was a pause.
When he looked at her, he saw she was staring at her palms, which were coated in blood.
Quickly, he grabbed her by the wrists, straightened her up, and examined her hands. “What happened?”
“You blind?” She raised her arms. The sides of her white T-shirt were wet with blood, right up the ribs like a couple of wild brushstrokes.
“Lift your shirt,” he said.
“Forget it. I already took my shirt off once for you. I’m not going to do it again.”
His gun came up as if his hand had a mind of its own. He pointed it at her head. “Do as I say or so help me you’ll join them.”