by Zuko, Joseph
He got the belt clean, dried and put it on in addition to his tool belt. It was very heavy and clunky but it made him feel safer.
“Let me show you this.” Cliff held up the revolver to Tina. He showed her what to push to get the cylinder to pop out. “You can pull back the hammer first and it makes it easier to squeeze the trigger.”
He handed over the gun. She got used to the weight and popped the cylinder out a few times. Then she pulled a round out to see how to reload it.
“Okay, I got it. Now go get your wall up.” Tina patted Cliff on the butt.
It was time for him to do the job that he was good at. Building something fast and cheap was his specialty. His daughter watched and kept an eagle eye from the bedroom window.
Cliff threw on a pair of heavy work gloves as he jogged to the back of the truck. He grabbed four long lengths of lumber and up the stairs he went. He carried load after load up the steps. There was no doubt that he would get a good night’s sleep after all this cardio. Like Cliff promised, he had a strong, well-braced wall up in less than an hour of cutting, drilling and hammering.
Chapter 12
Karen had finally washed all of the sticky blood out of her hair. She also had to change out of Jim’s blood soaked button up shirt. For the last twenty minutes Karen had been trying to keep Robin asleep, but with the racket it was almost impossible.
There was still no call from Jim or her mother. She had spent most of the time double and triple checking that she had everything ready to roll the minute Jim showed up. She kept her phone in her hand in case anyone called. Karen wanted to call Jim, but she was so afraid he would be sneaking past a group of the infected humans at that exact moment, Jim would be torn apart and she would have to listen to him die. Karen turned down her phone after she thought about it happening to Jim. The phone vibrated in her hand telling her that it was in silent mode.
Robin’s head bobbed and she had conked all the way back out. Karen laid the little one back on the bed next to her big sister. Valerie had been hardcore gaming for a long while now. Karen’s “mom instinct” was telling her to get the kid off the computer, but what else could she do and be that quiet?
A thought occurred to Karen, they would not be taking the laptop with them. What good would a chunk of plastic be against one of those infected people? Another thought crossed Karen’s mind. Her daughter might not get to play on the computer or watch SpongeBob for a very long time. Karen was surprisingly okay with the idea of no more TV. It would be good for the girls not to watch so many shows. Then Karen’s heart flooded with grief. If the government couldn’t get this whole mess under control there wouldn’t be any Facebook.
Shit balls!
Like any addiction, the idea of losing Facebook drove Karen nuts, but it also felt freeing. No more status updates or making sure she wrote, “Happy Birthday!!!” on someone’s wall that she barely knew. The uncertainty of the whole situation gave her a stomach ache.
Would it blow over in a few days and get back to normal, or would this be how it is for the rest of her life?
Tears formed in her eyes from the thought. A lifetime of running and fear was a nightmare scenario for her and the children. A horrible noise outside ripped her from the dark thoughts and melancholy. It was not Cliff. No one had come down the steps. It sounded like a scream, but the sound was distorted.
Karen stepped to the window and her breath was taken away. The noise was coming from David, her older, deaf neighbor from next door. He was on foot and racing across the lot with a group of four infected hot on his tail. He was covered in sweat and blood. The distorted noise was the sound of him calling for help. As he chugged away for his front door it was very clear he was out of breath and needed to stop. The infected were younger and dressed in dark blue EMT outfits.
“HELP! HELP ME!” David cried out.
Tina and Cliff watched from their bedroom window. The new barrier he had built made it impossible to get down there in time to help David out.
David struggled to get across the last section of the lot. The infected closed in on him and were now in arms reach. As he stepped up onto the sidewalk the tip of his shoe caught the edge and down he went. The monsters were on him. They bit down and ripped out a chunk of flesh across his back and neck. David let out a mangled scream, but he didn’t give up. He got his feet back under himself and stood up with a powerful yell. He tossed the creatures off his back and they tumbled to the ground behind him. The four infected beasts wrestled to escape each other’s arms and legs.
David’s face had become pale and he ran with a limp for the corridor that led to his front door. Karen lost sight of him as he passed the stairway that led up to Cliff and Tina’s place. She could hear the sounds of his keys jingling as he pulled them from his pocket. Karen dashed out of the bedroom and ran to her front door. She pressed her nose to the cold metal surface and looked out the peephole.
David used the stairway as a crutch and pulled himself along. Karen was able to see down the entryway, past him and to the group of relentless infected. They had gotten back to their feet, resumed their hunt and immediately chased after him.
Karen broke out into an instant sweat as she helplessly watched David fight to get his key into the doorknob. He had been bitten and would turn. There was no saving him. She couldn’t risk opening the door. There was no fighting the four of them.
All she could do was watch.
He got his key into the knob and popped open his front door. The four infected caught him in the doorway. He tried to push them back, but his wounds had weakened him. Karen banged at her door. She couldn’t stop herself.
“Leave him alone!” she yelled. She tried to get their attention.
Nothing would stop them from feeding. They bit and ripped into him. He fell to the floor of his apartment and rolled to his stomach. He tried to crawl away. They used their nails and teeth to pull the flesh from his back. Clumps of meat were peeled away and crammed into their hungry mouths.
The sound of absolute pain echoed throughout the apartment. Up the flight of stairs, Cliff and Tina clutched their children and tried to cover their ears to block out the horrible sounds. Karen kicked and palm struck at the door, her mouth was unable to form words. She screamed nonsense as tears fell from her eyes.
David kept fighting to get away. He pulled himself deeper into his apartment and tried to kick at one of the infected.
“SOMEONE-HELP-ME!” his words were crushed together as he cried for salvation. Blood sprayed the walls as he fought to get off of his belly. The infected chewed, scratched and scraped at his midsection. As if it pleased them to torture the man longer.
His body finally gave out and he lay flat on his back, letting the monsters feed on his insides. He was still alive and begging for mercy. It took a very long time for his screams and cries to fall silent.
It felt like an eternity for Karen. She could not stop herself from watching every second of the attack. The infected monsters dug and pulled at the body for so long that they split him in two. At that point Karen could not take anymore. She turned her back to the door and slid down to her butt, folded her arms across the top of her knees, dropped her head onto her forearms and wept.
She could hear them continuing to strip the meat off the dead body and viciously eat every scrap they took. It was a sight Karen knew would haunt her for the rest of her life. She sat on the floor crying until her legs felt numb.
The bedroom door opened and Valerie stepped out.
“Is it safe?” the little girl asked.
“Yes,” Karen said as she wiped away the tears on her face.
“Why are you sad Mama? Is it because of the man or is it because Daddy isn’t here?”
“It’s everything.” Karen ran her hands through her hair and pulled it out of her face, “Go play your game. Mommy needs another minute.”
Even though she wanted to ask another question, Valerie listened to her Mama and climbed back onto the bed and continued to play h
er game.
Karen’s phone began to vibrate in her pocket. Her fingers struggled to pull the phone out of her fitted jeans.
It was Jim.
She swiped the phone to answer the call.
“Jim, thank God! Are you okay? Where are you?” her words stammered out of her mouth.
“Karen, I’m fine. I’m on the 205 bridge. Are you and the girls safe?”
Karen could hear the hesitation in Jim’s voice. He was keeping something from her. It meant that it was bad out there and he was afraid to tell her just how bad it was. She chose her words carefully. It would not help the situation to make Jim even more worried.
“Yes. We’re okay.” She pushed her thumb into her other ear to block out the sound of the infected feeding on the other side of the door.
“Baby, I’m coming home. You kiss those girls for me and tell them that Daddy’s on his way.”
Her whole body shook as she forced out the next words, “I will. Jim, please hurry home. People are going…nuts.” She covered the phone so he couldn’t hear her sobs.
Jim’s voice broke, “I love you so much. I’ll be home soon.”
“I love you too,” she said as she pulled the phone away from her ear and watched as the small screen told her that the call had been disconnected. She pushed herself up off the floor and walked to her bedroom.
Karen fell onto the bed and held Valerie. She delivered kiss after kiss to the little girl. Valerie had no idea what her Mama was doing but did not mind the love and attention.
“Daddy is on his way, baby.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s halfway home.” Karen carefully slid in next to the sleeping Robin and kissed her on the forehead. Valerie lay on the other side of Karen.
The three snuggled and held each other. Karen focused on this moment. How soft and warm the bed was. How the children’s little bodies felt against hers. She channeled her mind to push out all of the bad thoughts and images and replace them with this moment. This small sliver of time when her children were safe and Jim was still alive. Karen closed her eyes and whispered over and over to herself.
“We are safe and Jim is alive.”
The horrible day and last night’s rough sleep had left Karen exhausted. After a few minutes of relaxing and focusing on the golden moment with her children she had drifted into an almost sleep state. Her body sunk deeper into the mattress. Valerie had closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she slept in the nook of Karen’s arm and chest. Karen’s mind drifted out of consciousness and into the dream world where minutes felt like hours, where the dream world felt real and the nightmare happening in the real world disappeared.
Karen was yanked out of the dream by the sound of gunfire and screams. At first it sounded like someone was watching an action movie in the apartment next door. Karen’s eyes opened and she clutched her children closer to her body. It took her a moment to get her bearings and remember where she was and what was happening.
The shots fired sounded like machine guns. The noise was coming from across the complex. Maybe out in the street. She worked to get out from under the sleeping children.
Once she was up, she moved to the window. Karen was so curious to find out what was happening, but she did not want to get hit with a wild round. Not that these super thin walls would do much to protect her.
She got up the courage to peek out with one eye. It was two men and a woman dressed in camouflage. Each of them was armed with an assault rifle. They sprayed rounds into a large pack of infected humans. The machine guns did a great job of chewing up the dead bodies, but most of the shots missed their actual weak spot.
The infected charged forward, straight into the line of fire, they never even batted an eye as their comrades fell victim to lead poisoning.
To Karen they did not appear to be with the Army. They had no badges or patches on their clothing. They looked more like weekend warriors, hunters or doomsday nuts. Although, given the current state of things, she could not call them nuts anymore.
They fired in short bursts and then fell back, working backwards across the edge of the parking lot. They took turns firing while the others reloaded.
“That’s it, I’m out!” One of the men yelled.
“Let’s get back to the church!” The woman called to the others. They took off running away from the apartments. The two with ammo paused every twenty feet and tried to finish off the last of the infected.
“Back to the church?” Karen repeated to herself.
There was an explosion in the distance. Close enough to rattle the windows next to Karen’s face. Black smoke rose above the roof of the adjacent building. Karen noticed there were many columns of smoke rising into the afternoon sky. There must have been hundreds of fires all over Vancouver for that much smoke to be in the air. Karen left the window to check the front door. She wanted to see if they were still eating the neighbor or if the noise had caught their attention and they had moved on.
She was disappointed to hear the sounds of shuffling feet outside the door. Karen stepped up to the peephole and looked out. A set of black eyes stared at the door as if they could see her through the hole. Its face was completely covered in blood and raw meat hung from its mouth. It threw its face into the door and the jolt scared the shit out of Karen.
She let out a scream. It was more like a yelp, but it was enough to excite the infected monsters on the other side of the door. It crashed into the door again. It hit it with all its force. The metal door groaned and the frame sounded like it had cracked. The others joined in and crashed their bodies into Karen’s front door. The noise woke up both children.
“Mama!” Valerie called.
“It’s okay, baby!” Karen answered her without thinking. Her voice riled them up even more. Their bodies smashed into the door over and over again. Karen backed up and pulled her gun from its holster. She heard the sound of a high-speed collision outside. Karen raced out of the hall and back into the bedroom.
“What was that, Mama?!” Valerie had her arms around her sister and the two held each other tightly.
“I don’t know baby,” Karen said as she spied out the window.
“Who at the door?” Robin tried to keep the conversation going.
“Bad people,” Karen whispered as she looked back at her daughter and pressed an index finger to her lips. There was an accident in the street next to the apartment. A car had crashed into a telephone pole.
Karen leaned closer to the window so she could get a better angle. It was instantly clear why the car hit the pole. It was trying to avoid the slow moving horde of infected old people. A large retirement community sat on the block next to the apartment complex. It looked like they were having a parade, a tragic old dead person parade.
The four creatures at the door would not give up. They hammered at the entrance. There was another loud crack after a really hard hit. The cheap apartment door would not hold up. If she couldn’t get them to leave they were going to smash it down.
The old infected bodies had begun to flood into the parking lot.
Karen stepped away from the window and walked back to the front door.
CRACK!
Every time they hit the door in unison the wood let out another horrible sound. Karen pointed the gun at the door.
CRACK!
Each impact made her jump. She clicked off the safety.
CRACK!
Karen aimed at what would be head height.
CRACK!
The door didn’t have much left.
BOOM!
She let a round fly. It smacked the door and left a little puncture under the peephole. A moment later, a body dropped.
“Mama!”
“I’m fine, baby. I’m taking care of the bad people!”
BOOM!
Another puncture and another body dropped. Karen felt a fire burn within her.
These motherfuckers killed that sweet old man.
They want to kill my girls!
They want to kill me!
Fuck them!
BOOM!
One more hole and one more dead infected.
Fuck them!
BOOM!
The last body hit the ground and everything went quiet. Hot tears ran down Karen’s cheeks. The worst day of her life and it was not even one o’clock.
Cliff and Tina watched from their window as the old bodies drifted towards the sound of gunfire. There were so many turned people heading for their corner of the complex. They didn’t have near enough ammo to put them all down.
“And the nightmare continues!” Tina rubbed her temples.
“This is ridiculous,” Cliff said as he looked at his wife. The two of them shared a moment of complete despair. Tina shut the window and pulled down the curtain.
In less than a minute the parking lot had over a hundred infected old bodies shuffling around, investigating the sounds and searching for food. Their hearing aids must have been working well because they quickly zeroed in on Karen’s front door.
Karen holstered the gun and walked back into her bedroom. Both girls wanted to be picked up right away. She lifted one up into each arm. Their little heads dropped down onto their Mama’s shoulders.
“It’s okay,” Karen comforted them. She was trying to convince herself and the little ones. “Mama took care of the bad people.”
“What was that noise?” Valerie pulled in tight.
“It was Mama’s gun.”
“So loud.” Robin pointed to her ears.
“It was loud. I’m sorry,” Karen said as she delivered a barrage of kisses to both girls.
There was a loud thump at the front door. The noise made the little girls tremble in their mother’s arms.
“Are the bad people back?” Valerie groaned.
A wet hand whacked at the bedroom window. It sounded like a squeegee sliding across a windshield. Karen tried to hush the girl’s screams.
Chapter 13
Karen carried the girls from the bedroom into the walk-in-closet. She felt claustrophobic as soon as she pulled the door shut. She found the pull string that connected to the light above. Karen gave it a yank and the sixty-watt bulb filled the space with a soft yellow glow.