by Gibb, Lew
“Who? Ricardo? Man, he ain’t gonna be there. He texted me he was headin’ for his sister’s place in Denver when all hell started breakin’ loose last night.”
“What the hell was that all about anyway?”
“Fuck if I know. I don’t watch the news.”
“Whatever. My dad said these rich people are on pain meds. They’re here. We just gotta find ’em.”
Doors slammed, and more glass broke. From the sound of it, they were having a fine time destroying things. Rachel was afraid of going outside, but she had to leave the house sometime if she was going to get home, and getting “taken care of” by the two downstairs was even less appealing than fighting zombies.
She left the door cracked and tiptoed over to the window. A faded blue Chevy Caprice covered in rust spots was parked at an angle in front of the main entrance. The car looked abandoned, with two wheels on the grass and both doors gaping open. She could probably outrun the little car in her van, but the memory of the clogged highway put a knife in the heart of that plan.
“I’m going to check upstairs,” Steve yelled just before heavy footfalls pounded up the stairs. “Then we’re outta here.”
Rachel hurried over to the door and pushed it shut, then kept her hand on the handle, hoping they would leave her room alone but not liking her chances much. While the sounds of Steve crashing through the former master bedroom and bath next door reverberated through the walls, Rachel stared at the handle. It didn’t even have a thumb lock.
The sound of Steve’s cursing was uncomfortably close. She rested her hand on the grip of her pistol, not positive she could shoot him if it came down to it. From everything she had heard, if you had the slightest shred of empathy, it wasn’t easy to kill someone. Even her grandfather—who was a Second World War vet, and by all accounts, one of the biggest bad-asses to ever wear a Marine uniform—had told her he hesitated the first time he had to look a man in the eyes and pull the trigger.
She jumped when the door banged against the desk.
“Hey, there must be something good in here,” Steve yelled. “The door’s blocked.”
Rachel backed away too fast, and the heel of her boot hung up on the polished wood floor, giving off a high-pitched squeak as she lost her balance and fell backward. She hit the wood floor with a thump that made her teeth snap shut.
“Hey, I think there’s someone in here!” The door banged against the desk again, and Rachel flinched. All she could think about was getting away. She scrambled to her feet and hurried to the window. The old-fashioned sash went up much easier than expected and banged into the top of its frame. Rachel lifted her foot over the sill. Another loud bang sounded, followed by a piercing squeal as the desk moved.
“Motherfucker,” Steve yelled, and the desk squealed again. “Something’s blocking the door.”
There was another bang and a longer screech. Rachel looked over her shoulder. The desk was several inches away from the wall. She ducked under the sash and tried to push her shoulders through the opening. Something stopped her, pulling at her shoulders. She leaned into it and struggled harder. Whatever had her held fast.
She was hanging halfway out the window with one foot still in the room when Steve yelled, “Hey!” Rachel turned to see a gaunt face topped by a scraggly mass of blonde hair peering around the door. Steve’s wild, sunken eyes and gap-toothed smile made him look like a junkie version of Jack Nicholson from The Shining. “Barry,” he shouted, pulling his head back through the opening, “there’s a chick up here! She’s on the roof.”
Rachel’s heart was going like a machine gun when she remembered the pack slung on her back. With a burst of adrenaline-fueled strength, she hunched lower in the opening and threw her weight against the straps. The bag’s resistance gave way suddenly, and she tumbled out, rolled twice, and came to a stop at the roof’s edge. Without hesitating, she grabbed the gutter and dangled the lower half of her body into empty space. The edge of the asphalt shingles dug into her stomach as she flailed blindly with her legs, feeling for the trellis she knew was there. Her toe hit something. She tried again and hooked the trellis with her foot. With a death grip on the gutter, she lowered herself until her other foot was on the next crosspiece. Shaking with fear and supporting most of her weight with her arms, she took another step. A long piercing screech sounded from inside the office. Rachel was about to drop her head below roof level when the leering, pock-marked face appeared at the window.
“Barry!” Steve screamed, eyes bulging out of his skull even more. “Out on the fucking porch! She’s getting away, man!”
Rachel ducked her head and grabbed the trellis. As soon as she let go of the gutter, the wood under her left foot gave way with a snap. Then the other foot broke free, leaving her hanging by her arms. Before she could get a foot back on something solid, the flimsy trellis tilted away from the house. Gripping the wood harder did nothing to slow her fall. It seemed to last a long time. Her view of the flimsy wooden grid remained the same until she hit the ground with a thud that reverberated through her whole body and seemed loud enough to draw every zombie in the neighborhood. Time seemed to stop. The trellis lay on top of her, purple Clematis flowers and large green leaves hanging in her face. She needed to get up and run, but her body was paralyzed.
When Rachel was ten, she had over-rotated on a one and a half dive and hit the water with a slap that had knocked the wind out of her. The water had turned hard as concrete. That feeling wasn’t even close to what she felt now. Her chest wouldn’t let her breathe. Her mouth hung open like a dying fish, and her lungs refused her desperate order to inhale. Just one breath. Please! her mind begged, but it did no good.
Time seemed to start again with the sound of feet pounding across the porch.
“I got her!” the high-pitched voice yelled. Barry. “She fell!” The pounding moved down the stairs. In the back of her mind, she wished he would be quieter. “Damn, I hope she’s not dead. Or paralyzed.” His gravely smoker’s laugh made the hair on Rachel’s neck and forearms stand on end. The voice was right on top of her. “That wouldn’t be near as much fun.”
The weight of the trellis levitated as if by magic and floated away while she was still desperately trying to move air into her lungs. A man loomed over her, a near twin of the man from the roof, except this one had scraggly dark hair. His scrawny arms poked out of a tattered Marlborough t-shirt, and the tendons stood out on his long skinny neck, making him look like a demented chicken as he wrestled the mangled trellis out of the way.
“Fuck yeah!” he said. “She’s alive!” He leaned over and licked his lips as his eyes scanned her from top to bottom. “Not bad looking either.”
His rotten-toothed, sadistic grin left no doubt about what he had in mind. An image of what it might be like to have the disgusting man on top of her flashed through Rachel’s mind and gave her the strength to roll to one side and scramble to her feet. She was just starting to rise when Barry grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off her feet for a second before dropping her back to the ground.
“Where you going, sweet thing?” he hissed, his breath steamy warm in her ear. The smell of his decaying teeth and stale alcohol breath made her struggle harder. She kicked her legs and twisted her body.
“We’re gonna have some fun now!” His voice strained with the effort of trying to drag her toward the stairs as she thrashed back and forth. It seemed that, in his emaciated state, he wasn’t finding it as easy as he might have thought to move an unwilling person very far. Rachel twisted and fought like a snake, but he hung on. Something hard brushed the inside of her forearm. A knife handle. She had forgotten all about her weapons.
Rachel snatched the boning knife from the makeshift hip scabbard and plunged it into Barry’s thigh. The thin, razor-sharp blade penetrated easily through his pants and muscle and stopped when it hit bone. His scream pierced her eardrum at the same time he released her. The sudden movement, coupled with her surprise at actuall
y having stabbed him, ripped the knife from her hand. Rachel spun to face him and drew the chef’s knife. Barry fell to his knees with the black-handled knife sticking straight out of his thigh. Much more of the blade was visible than she expected, probably because he was so emaciated. He rocked back on his heels and reached for the handle with both hands. His hands stopped an inch from the protruding handle like there was a forcefield around it. He groaned and rocked front to back on his knees. Then he looked up, and their eyes met. Rachel was frozen in place, finally breathing hard, and wondering what to do next.
Something slammed into her side and drove her to the ground. The chef’s knife flew out of her hand. She watched it settle into the grass out of reach while her face was pressed to the ground. Steve grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. He pushed both hands on her chest, swung a leg across her body, and dropped into a kneeling position with a leg on either side of her torso. His weight drove the air from her lungs again. Before she could react, he’d grabbed her wrists and pressed them to the ground on either side of her head. He was stronger, but probably not by much. His face showed the effort of trying to maintain the upper hand against her wild bucking and thrashing. The ribs of his emaciated torso showed through the grungy unbuttoned dress hanging off his meth-ravaged body. No way could he swim two miles or run a six-minute mile. Rachel straightened both arms, pushing them over her head and forcing him to lean forward—his putrid breath was even worse than Barry’s—then rotated her fists outside his forearms and pulled down. The move broke his grip, and he fell forward, still pinning her body to the ground.
Rachel went for his eyes, wishing she was a little more of a girly-girl. Some long nails would be handy. The nails she had were enough to make him scream when she raked his cheek with her left hand, barely missing his eyes, while she grabbed the knife in her boot with her right.
He rocked back and punched her in the face. A bright flash, then blackness crept across her vision, but she held onto the knife. Shaking her head to clear the darkness, Rachel caught a glancing blow on the side of her head as she plunged the knife into Steve’s lower back. He gasped and arched his back, reaching for the spot with both hands. She yanked the knife free and stabbed again, her fist making contact with his back.
Rachel remembered Jerry telling her about knife wounds. “It’s pretty amazing how tough human tissue is,” he’d told her. “People usually have pretty crappy, dull knives, so the organs have a tendency to move out of the way. If you really want to do some damage, the knife has to be really sharp. And it would be a good idea to stab more than once.” At the time, she had nodded, humoring him and thinking what a weird bunch paramedics were.
Rachel pulled the blade free and punched it into Steve’s side twice more. He had been twisting away from the second blow, and the knife tore a large gash just above the wallet pocket of his dirty jeans as he rolled off of her. He fell on his side, moaning and pressing one hand against his hip. He was reaching behind his back with the other hand like someone trying to scratch an itch while blood gushed between his fingers. His face paled while Rachel watched. She rolled to her hands and knees. She was about to stand when Barry screamed from behind her.
“You stabbed me!” His voice was petulant, as if Rachel’s response had been completely out of proportion to his attempted rape. Jerry said the guys that acted the toughest usually turned into whining babies when they were hurt. Rachel turned. The dark-haired tweaker was about eight feet away, gripping the boning knife in one bloody hand and hobbling toward her. A glistening softball-sized patch of red darkened the leg of his jeans around the hole in his thigh. His face twisted with pain at each step. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, bitch!”
Rachel felt something hard under her right knee. Realized she was kneeling on the chef’s knife. She straightened and reversed her grip on the six-inch utility knife, holding it by the tip with her arm cocked like she was going to throw it.
Barry stopped six feet away and laughed. His teeth looked like an old set of ivory dominoes, yellow and pitted with black dots. “That shit only works in the movies.”
Rachel threw the knife with all her strength. Barry leaned to one side with a smile and turned to watch as it sailed past and clanked off the porch railing. It bounced into one of the juniper bushes surrounding the porch. He was just turning back when Rachel lunged forward and buried the chef’s knife’s full ten inches in his stomach. Their faces ended up inches away from each other. She stared into his surprised eyes as she pulled the knife free, hesitated a split second while she thought of her grandfather, and stabbed him again. A gush of warmth flowed over her hand as the blade came free and Barry staggered back.
He made a wild swipe, and her boning knife burned a line across the outside of her shoulder. A trickle of warmth started down her arm as Rachel braced herself to stab him again. Barry’s eyes glazed over, and he fell to his knees. Blood soaked his shirt and had already darkened his jeans to the knees. He moaned and pitched forward onto his face.
Rachel kept the chef’s knife ready as she knelt and pried her boning knife free. Her eyes darted from the two tweakers to the trees lining the property. The light was still soft pre-dawn gray, and she couldn’t see much more than shadows at that distance. She couldn’t tell if the two rapists were still breathing, but they weren’t moving. Judging by the amount of blood darkening the grass beneath them, if they weren’t dead, they would be soon.
A faint crunching sound made her turn around. A balding man with a rust-colored goatee and a too-small t-shirt, the faded fabric stretched thin and riding up over his hairy beer gut, cantered toward her. Two more ragged-looking men with the same bloody goatees and a petite blonde girl of about six followed him up the driveway. The yellow daisies on the girl’s sundress were stained poppy red with blood.
Rachel turned and sprinted for the house. She was up the stairs and across the porch in seconds. A piercing wail followed her into the mansion. She slammed the door, twisted the deadbolt, and leaned all her weight against it. Her breath came in ragged gasps while her eyes scanned the entryway for something to brace the door.
Then…nothing happened. No bodies slammed against the door. The expected horde didn’t come came crashing through the living room’s huge window. Rachel turned her head and looked out the window. What she saw was mesmerizing and nauseating at the same time. Two of the men were taking bites out of Steve’s torso while he screamed and twisted like a snake with its head cut off. The pigtailed girl and the one with the muffin-top were feeding on Barry’s limp body. The girl held his forearm like a big corn cob while she bit chunks of flesh from it and stared into the distance with dead, red-rimmed eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jerry inched along the top of the wall on his hands and knees, straining to keep quiet as the metal channel holding the ceiling panels dug into his knee. He was terrified of missing the wall, putting a knee through the light acoustic ceiling material, and alerting the zombies to his presence—or worse, falling through. He had to stop every few feet and rub his itchy nose to keep from sneezing the dust that swirled around every time he moved. Jerry didn’t know if the zombies were climbers, but he didn’t want to find out.
After collecting his spear from the supply closet and making his way back to the room he had spent the night in, he had decided to check the other rooms. If there was anyone else alive, he would feel terrible if he didn’t do something to help. And maybe they could work together. Once he passed the intersection of the wall separating his room from the next, he slipped the blade of his Gerber multi-tool under a ceiling panel, pried it up, and worked his fingers into the gap. Then he leaned down to look through the crack.
The face of a blonde-haired female zombie with bulging bloodshot eyes appeared not eighteen inches away.
Jerry jerked back—too far. He lost his balance. His arms flailed but found nothing to stop his slow-motion fall. The ceiling tiles gave way like they weren’t there, and the aluminum support frame crackled and twis
ted under his weight but barely slowed his descent. Something snagged his jacket and spun him at least one complete revolution before he slammed into the floor on his right side. A grunt and the whoosh of air exiting his lungs were the only sounds he made. The thought that the zombies would be coming pushed the pain and his inability to breathe to the back of his mind. Jerry scrambled to his feet and yanked at a piece of aluminum that was wrapped around his arm. The frame seemed to be fighting back. Everything was connected to itself, and the harder he struggled the worse it got.
He started toward the closet before he realized the door was barricaded from the inside. Then he spun for the room where he had spent the night. Same problem. Mike’s shredded uniform lay crumpled at his feet. Something slammed into his side. He was on the floor again with something heavy weighing him down. A sharp pain in his shoulder made him try to scream, but there was still no air in his lungs. Jerry snapped his arm back twice and hit something soft, but the pain didn’t let up. The arms wrapped around his chest were wrapped in beige scrubs marred by rust-colored stains. Long black hair dangled in his face as he fought to get free. He turned a half circle and saw three more zombies shambling toward him. His whole body felt like it was doused in ice water.
He still had the multi-tool in his right hand. An awkward stab over his left shoulder hit air. The pain ramped up. Another stab, harder. A spurt of something warm and wet doused his hand, and the bite released. He stabbed again and felt the weight slide off. Jerry pushed to his feet and turned to meet the approaching zombies. Blood and something clear coated his knife hand. The irony of being killed by zombies before he even made it out of the hospital made him grit his teeth and grip the multi-tool harder.
A shuffle-step to one side caused the zombies to bunch up. He lunged and stabbed the leader under the jaw. Keeping the pressure on, he pushed the struggling, bleeding zombie into the two behind him. Only about two inches of the knife had penetrated before he felt it hit something hard. Probably the roof of the mouth. The skull was a lot tougher than the movies made it out to be. The zombie seemed not to notice the blade in his jaw. He swung his arms in large awkward arcs, clawing at Jerry’s arms. Jerry twisted the blade and tried to push it toward the jugular vein at the side of the neck. It tore free, and Jerry’s fist struck the wall so hard he almost dropped the knife. A jet of blood passed over his arm and painted the wall. Jerry grabbed the zombie’s collar and dragged him around, using his body as a shield from the other two. He backed up a step and shoved the zombie at the others.