by D A Madigan
He could take a couple of the upstairs interior doors off and nail them across the opening at the top of the stairs, then put the cabinet against that barricade. It would be pretty solid, and the stairs were too narrow for more than two zombies at most to get up there at once. So that might hold for a while.
Assuming the fuckers didn't just climb up the outside walls like cockroaches and come screaming in the upstairs windows.
But all of that would have to wait until Sheila got home. If she got home... and that was the next thing that troubled him. How long should he wait?
In the meantime, he'd already taken the bedroom door off its hinges, and was working on the closet door. He'd be ready to barricade off the top of the house, once Sheila was up here with them.
How long could they stay up here? He had no idea, really. Unless government jets came over in the next few days and crop dusted the city with anti-zombie gas, the lights would probably go off within a week at most. There was a battery powered emergency radio in the hardware drawer, somewhere, he was pretty sure. Rationing food and water... maybe they had enough for two weeks? Maybe?
And how hellish was it going to get, when the power went out? No more flush toilet then. Fuck. He should have brought up the mop bucket. Well... when Sheila got home, he'd have to run downstairs one last time to unlock the back door for her. He could grab the bucket on the way back up. They didn't need it right now...
Every five minutes, he put down his tools and went over to each of the bedroom windows in turn and peered out through the slits in their curtains he had artfully arranged. He didn't want anyone -- or any THING -- in the streets to see movement, even the slight movement of a curtain being pulled aside and put back in place, from up here.
The window that looked out on the back, where Sheila usually parked, didn't show much. Not even the usual amount of occasional traffic going up and down along the back alley. He suspected a lot of people were forting up in their houses, like him and Vicki. Or they were at work.
The window that looked out the front, onto the street, though...
Half an hour ago, a pick-up truck had come up Douglass Boulevard at speeds far in excess of the 25 mph permitted in the neighborhood, blowing its horn hard as it rolled. Dan had been sickened to see what looked like a dozen screaming, bloody figures in various types of clothing... one young, very fat woman completely naked -- in addition to bite marks, it looked as if someone had ripped her stomach open and long ribbons of bluish grey intestine were trailing out as she ran, nearly to the ground, slapping against her knees -- all of these not-people screaming and running after the truck, hands outstretched avidly, like some ghoulish parody of a bunch of hysterical groupies chasing a rock band's limousine.
One of Dan's neighbors had chosen that moment to try to back a big Cadillac Escalade out of their driveway into the street. The driver of the pickup had yanked his wheel over, frantically trying to avoid a collision. He'd run up on the sidewalk and knocked a fire hydrant off its mounting and then crashed into what was probably an eighty year old elm tree, crumpling the hood of the pick up back to the windshield like a cardboard box and blowing out all four tires on the truck simultaneously.
The Escalade had screeched its brakes, then revved its engine as whoever was inside ran the gears. The Escalade lurched forward again, trying to turn in an arc to head down the street.
The dozen zombies giving chase to the pick-up had divided; a group of four or five had run to the stopped pickup and swarmed over it like wolves with opposable thumbs, smashing out the glass in the cab with their bare hands and elbows and heads and dragging the stunned driver out through the driver's side window. Another half dozen or so had clambered all over the Escalade even as it tried to move off down the street. One had been laying lengthwise along the windshield pressing its face to the glass and shrieking. Whoever was driving obviously hadn't been able to see; they'd rear ended a parked BMW. And then the zombies were yanking two more shrieking, struggling people out into the street...
The two different vehicles were still out there. The Escalade had kept running far longer than the pickup, but both were stalled and silent now. The hole where the hydrant had been had finally stopped pumping water, although the gutters were still full and the sidewalks were wet. Most of the blood had been washed way, though. That was something.
The mob of zombies was still out there, though. Fifteen or twenty of them, now. Some of them wandering aimlessly up and down the street, others sitting on the sidewalk or people's front stoops staring blankly into space. If some of them had not been dressed eccentrically, or not dressed at all, and all of them hadn't had at least one prominent wound, more often many, they could have passed for a normal street gathering of somewhat bored living people, sitting around waiting for some promised event to begin.
Dan had no idea how Sheila was going to get past them.
He kept trying to call her. But all he got was a fast busy. Somewhere between here and the Galaxy call center, a cell phone tower that serviced Cricket phones must have gone down.
Dan was still amazed... astonished, really... by just how fast things had gone completely to shit.
Most of the channels on the TV still broadcast the normal daytime pablum. The news channels were all a chaos of people babbling hysterically, interspersed with various clips -- many of them obviously shot with cell phones -- showing screaming groups of bloody people running after anyone in sight who wasn't a zombie yet. Which had made Dan curious -- how could the zombies tell? In the zombie movies and TV shows, they could always tell, too. In SHAUN OF THE DEAD, though, the group of heroes had managed to fool a horde of zombies by acting like them... which Dan didn't think you could take remotely seriously. In THE WALKING DEAD, two of the heroes had once gotten through a zombie crowd by draping themselves in zombie guts. Something to do with sense of smell...
But the horde of street zombies had been chasing someone in a pick-up truck, and had gone after someone else in an Escalade. You wouldn't be able to smell someone inside a buttoned up car, and there was no way Dan was willing to believe anyone was stupid enough to try to drive during a zombie apocalypse with the windows down. So these zombies... these horrifically fast, hideously strong zombies... must have enough intelligence left to recognize living prey by their behavior. Zombies wouldn't drive a vehicle, therefore, someone behind the wheel of a moving vehicle must be food...
It was bad. It was very, very bad. If that was true, then any zombie that got a look at someone peeking out an upstairs window would most likely scream and point and start a zombie stampede towards the building holding that upstairs window...
Down on the street, a zombie screamed, and pointed towards the upstairs window Dan was standing just within.
Dan's blood literally ran cold. His stomach turned over, his heart started hammering in his chest like a temple gong, his testicles tried to draw up inside his body. And all he could think of was How do I save Vicki? How do I save Vicki? How do I save Vicki?
He could run downstairs. Close the door to the upstairs, run out on the front porch, pull the front door closed behind him, lock it. Run out into the yard, run as far down the street as he could, to distract them from the house...
Vicki was nine years old. How long could she survive in the upstairs bedroom on her own?
Didn't matter. He had to give her whatever chance he could.
He started to turn, to run to the stairs, to run down them...
...and saw, out of the corner of his eye as he turned, the zombie that had screamed was running... across his next door neighbor's lawn.
Up to his next door neighbor's house.
With the sprinting, shrieking horde all running hard behind.
The zombie hadn't been pointing at Dan's upstairs window, it had been pointing at the next door neighbor's upstairs window.
The gale force storm of relief that blew threw him was immediately followed by a little pack of yapping guilt dogs. How could he be relieved that something so horrible w
as happening to his neighbors and not him?
Because of Vicki, that's why.
Dan hung on to that thought. Because of Vicki. And Sheila, too. Because of them, he was going to have to... how did Tallahassee put it?
'Nut up or shut up'. That was it.
Dan walked across the hall to his study and angled his head to see out the side window there.
He could hear screams -- human screams -- coming from the house, now.
The house next door to Dan and Sheila was a lovely yellow brick. It had just been sold a year and a half ago to the family that lived there now. Dan and Sheila had looked it up on the realtor's website when it was on the market; the asking price had been a cool half million. It was a large two story house with many pleasant features, including a big two story deck on the back, a large kitchen with modern appliances, several rooms that could be used as offices, several working fireplaces, a full backyard, and a two car garage on the back alley.
And now, a horde of zombies was crashing in to it through the front windows on the first floor.
It was exactly the scenario Dan was terrified would happen at his own house.
Dan couldn't even remember the neighbors' names. They were a professional couple around the same age and he and Sheila. They had a couple of kids who were older than Vicki. On holidays they often had other family members over. Shortly after moving in, they had put up a high board fence around their backyard, which Dan figured probably meant they didn't much want to socialize with their immediate next door neighbors.
Now, as Dan watched, paralyzed with dread and horror, he saw their kitchen window pushed upwards and the husband -- a fairly fit, tennis tanned guy with glasses whose blond hair was going grey here and there -- straddle the window sill, then swing his other leg out, duck his upper body through, and jump to the ground.
Dan couldn't figure out what he was doing. The kitchen led straight onto the back deck and the back deck led to the back yard, which was fenced in. And out at the alley was their garage, where their vehicles should be -- so why was he coming out a side wind --
There were figures moving around in the other rooms of the house -- Dan could hear zombie-screams now. They'd gotten in, and -- he leaned forward, just a little, looking to the rear of the house next door. The deck was covered back there, but --
Yes. There were bloody, screaming figures on the back deck, and in the back yard. They must have circled around the other side of the house and gone through the gate in the fence over there. Now they were in the back yard. Bad. Really bad.
The husband had his hands up, now, reaching to help one of the kids -- the daughter -- who was sliding out the window. Jesus, they were in deep shit. There was a shrub blocking sight of that window from the front street, but where were they gonna go?
Should he go down and open the back door and try to signal them into the house?
He stood there, paralyzed with indecision. His own house was no fortress; the only thing keeping him and Vicki alive now was that the zombie hordes had no reason to try to get in here. If one of those creatures got it into whatever passed for its mind that there was food in Dan and Sheila's house, then they were all dead. He couldn't barricade the top floor fast enough to baffle that horde.
But these were human beings -- kids! -- being driven out into streets overrun with flesh eating ghouls! He couldn't just let them --
There were screams from the kitchen.
The girl tried to let go and drop to her father, but there were hands grabbing her wrists now... bloody hands. The daughter was being hauled back up.
Her dad jumped up and grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down. Screams were continuing to ring out of the kitchen windows like the pealing of some hellish bell; Dan could only assume the wife and son were in there, probably being attacked and devoured by whatever creatures had managed to get in with them.
Abruptly, the girl and her dad fell to the ground again. They got back up. As Dan watched, the dad grabbed his daughter and pulled her face into his chest. Dan didn't know why, until he heard her start screaming and sobbing uncontrollably, only slightly muffled by her face being pressed into her dad's shirtfront.
Damn it, they had to be quiet, QUIET --
The kitchen window above them shattered outward as a tow haired kid Dan had seen many times hanging out in front of the apartment buildings across the street came hurtling through. The kid landed, shrieking and howling, on father and daughter and started clawing and biting indiscriminately at them.
The dad shoved the screaming, biting kid into the side of the house with a thud and yelled something to his daughter. Probably 'run!' But she didn't. She just stood there, screaming around the fingers she'd jammed into her mouth as two more shrieking, clawing, biting forms fell out the smashed window onto her father.
One of them bounced up and jumped onto the girl with a ululating howl like nothing that had ever been human. She went down, still screaming through the hands she'd jammed into her mouth.
For a minute or so.
Dan forced himself to step back from the window. If one of those things looked up, and caught sight of him --!
He forced himself not to throw up. If he started throwing up, they might hear it. Smell it. Something.
And at that moment, his cell phone rang.
He walked across the hall, back into his bedroom, to answer it. Vicki had sat bolt upright, eyes wide. But she hadn't forgotten Dan's repeated instructions about noise discipline; instead of shrieking, as she probably wanted to, she just whispered, "Is it mommy?"
Dan put the phone to his ear and whispered, "Hello?"
v.
Sheila was only halfway up Commerce Crossing when she saw the UPS delivery truck on its side, smoke pouring out of its engine, blocking the entire lane she was in and half of the other.
As she'd pulled out of the Galaxy parking lot onto Commerce Crossing, she'd gunned her engine, ramming the gas pedal down to try and outdistance the horde of screaming, sprinting zombies that were chasing after her borrowed... hell, fuck it, stolen... van. She'd gunned it all the way up the road, which had been mercifully clear of vehicles for half its length. Of course, the sound of her engine had brought heads snapping around on either side of the road, where zombies had been wandering aimlessly in open fields and the parking lots of other commercial buildings. They'd all immediately joined the mob of ravenous undead galloping up the road after her.
Sheila knew that was bad. The fact that they had enough of a mental process to associate the sound of a running engine with 'food' was goddam alarming, to say the least.
The wreckage of the UPS truck was, of course, in the worst possible place it could have been from Sheila's point of view... right around a blind curve. And she'd been doing at least fifty coming around the curve. She saw the brown, smoking hulk blocking three quarters of the road and barely had a second to swerve all the way over to the left, banging up over the curb there and across a grassy verge and then across another concrete bumper into the parking lot outside a building labeled CDC Solutions. The van was sure-footed enough not to turn over, but the parking lot was full of parked vehicles, and Sheila could not prevent the van she was driving from smashing into the front of someone's mint green BMW.
And slewing sideways to a grinding halt.
And stalling.
She wanted to scream and bit down on it. There were at least fifty zombies chasing her van and swerving off the road into a parking lot wasn't going to slow them down in the slightest. She either got moving again or...
She grabbed the keys and turned them. The lights came on on the dashboard and the van's engine, agreeably enough, vroomed back into life. But she was wedged in with the green BMW in front of her and a white SUV along her left side. She'd need to back up --
She worked the shift urgently, throwing the van into reverse. The wheels spun for a heartstopping second -- the rear wheels were in the grass -- but then the front wheel drive kicked in and shoved the van backwards. She b
umped back over the concrete bumper, then banged back down off the curb onto the road.
Somewhere in there, something made a heavy thumping sound on the passenger side of the van, but Sheila had no attention to spare right that second.
She cut her wheel frantically left again, so as not to run into the smoking hulk of the UPS truck, which she could now see had some reddish flames licking up from under the hood...
...and noticed, for the first time... there were no zombies.
She stared frantically into the rear view mirror, showing the road behind her. Where were they -- there.
Standing along the road twenty feet behind her. Staring at her van avidly, as if all they wanted to do in the world was swarm over her like a horde of carnivorous locusts.
But they weren't.
Why not?
Never fucking MIND, Sheila -- get your ass in gear! She shoved the stick shift back into first and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal. The van screeched forward, around the end of the UPS truck, bumping up over the curb again on the driver's side, then back down to the road again.
As she sped off up the remaining length of Commerce Crossing, she kept shooting glances into her rear view mirrors. Nothing. They weren't coming past that wrecked van. Why...?
Then she was coming up on Preston Highway and forgot about it. The intersection was a horrible mess; a three car pileup had nearly closed off Commerce Crossing entirely. Sheila had to turn hard right to get around it, and while she was doing that, she had to decide which route she wanted to try to take home. Straight down Preston, then right on Outer Loop and head down to Old Shep, or the more roundabout way up Cooper Chapel to Outer Loop. If all the roads were in this kind of crappy condition, then --
Movement up in the air drew her eye; to her amazement, there was a helicopter up there, emblazoned with the WAVE-3 logo.
She reached over and turned the radio on. It hadn't even occurred to her to check and see if there was anything useful on the air, the world seemed to have gone so completely and utterly to hell so fast.