by Main, Lynn
“I’ll check it out later.” “There isn’t g oing to be a later Dead Boy, they are coming to kill us all.” I am finally alerted enough to open my eyes fully and look at him. Chris looks green and his eyes are almost too wide open.
“What? What is it?” I say, jumping up from the couch and looking frantically around for my shoes. “I…I can’t describe it. You’ll just have to come s ee this for yourself.” His voice is still calm and he still seems jaded but now he is also frightened again; it is just in a different way. I don’t know if that way is better or not.
After we crawl under the lockers and stand, Chris starts walking towards the elevator banks, “Where are you going?” “Show you...” He says , stopping and holding his hand out, directing me to follow. He goes to the control panel with the up and down button and presses the up. The door to his right opens immediately and he steps on.
“How do you know these are safe?” “They are. I have already gone up once.” He hits the top floor button and the doors close. I wait a little anxious wondering if I should have woken Faith or Kim to tell them where I was going. The problem with that idea is that I still don’t know where I am going.
We get off of the elevator at the top floor and Chris hustles to the end of the hall where a door is open. “Come on. “ He says sounding almost excited and disappears through it. I enter a maintenance room and hear strange thunder. It almost seems like the rumble of a distant earthquake. I can feel more of a vibration than hear an actual sound. That is not the strangest thing about it though; the strangest thing about it is that it doesn’t stop.
When I realize that it is not dissipating, I begin to feel panicked again. I see a ladder and Chris is up it and through a square hole in the ceiling with the early morning hazy blue on the other side. I climb up the ladder after him and am in a tiny shack on the roof.
When I push the trap door shut the rumble is less apparent. Not because it has gone away or stopped, but because there is a ruckus coming from the sky. Chris opens the door to the shack and I look up. The sky itself is flapping. Birds, all types of birds, are flying due north. They are so thick…so many. I feel the most disturbing foreboding from the sight of them. I start to pull the door back shut when I realize that Chris is walking towards the south side of the hospital, straight under the mass bird migration.
I stand dumb, staring up at the birds, especially since there are cranes and gulls mixed in with the ducks and geese. “Come on, you will want to hurry to see this.” Chris says and I look back down at him. He is standing about twenty feet past me near the edge of the building. I walk quickly to catch him.
When I am even with him I slow and he starts walking again. I don’t have to get to the edge of the building to see what is making the constant loud rumble, but can’t process it instantly. My eyes will not tell me what they see at first, either that or my brain sends the message back with a note: Sorry, but you must be mistaken.
I have to work the idea around in my mind for a while before I can accept what it is I am looking at and focus on it. When I do, I shake my head and spin around. I fall into a fetal huddle and let the sight absorb into my thoughts.
They are coming up through the city center, but not just on the roadways. Impossibly like a liquid, they are oozing through the buildings. They are over a mile from us still. It would be impossible to see a group of zombies at that distance, any sized group, but this is not a group. In the way that it is most probably visible in space, it is more accurately ‘The Great Wall of China’ of zombies. They are so thick and so many and so driven that nothing stands in their way. Behind the front ranks, everything is flat beneath the wave of moving shadows. They are unrecognizable and indistinct in the maximum, but as a group, their devastation is fully recognizable for exactly what it is…an ending.
The hell out now Chris and I sprint back across the roof as if we are in some ridiculous foot race. I am so scared for all of us that I can’t think. If I open my mouth wide enough, my teeth start to chatter so I have to grind them. I slide down the ladder and blast through the hallway to the elevator door that still waits opened. I hit the 3 button and am going to hit the door close button when I hear Chris holler, “Wait! Dead Boy, please!”
My hand freezes by the button with my finger outstretched but I do not push it. I don’t respond either. I can’t talk. I have no way to describe what I saw with enough urgency to get them out fast enough. The wave will be here in a matter of minutes and not hours…of that I am certain. The doors start to close and my concentration breaks. I reach my hand between them and they bounce back open as they have been designed to. Chris practically leaps between them and I move my arm. The doors come closed again seconds later and we are moving down.
“Thanks…Uh for waiting for me man.”
“Sorry I…”
“It’s alright. I wish I’d come to get you sooner. Maybe we’d have more time to get out.”
“There’s not going to be anywhere to go.” I say, stepping back until my back hits the wall of the descending elevator. “It’s over.” “We can get away. Maybe we can take a boat or something. We can’t let them catch us. We have to get the hell out of here. Now!” Chris says, with panic elevating his voice more with each syllable. The bell dings and the doors open. Chris and I race off the elevator, back to the lounge.
I rip the door open screaming hoarsely, “Get up! We have to go now! I mean right now!” The boys start to cry but Faith and Kim each grab a hold of one. Faith grabs her shotgun and I help each of them through to the hall where Chris waits, holding the door open. I turn back at the last second and grab the duffel of supplies we had hauled up last night. I throw it at the locker tunnel and it slides partially through. I dive after it and push it out into the hall and scramble to my feet saying before I am standing. “Go! Run! Get to the car! Don’t wait for me!”
I stumble a second and shift the duffel’s strap on my shoulder and then run full tilt after them. I hit the stairs and jump up, letting my butt slide down the viscously grimy bannister and I catch Chris. I take the second set of steps two and three at a time and pass him and then Kim. I don’t slow until I am even with Faith as she pulls Jason along to the wedged open doors.
Panic We are almost to the doors and I am very confident we are going to make a clean break from this place when there is a loud echo from a gun blast.
I have to wrap my head around what is going on here. The first thing I know is that a bullet was fired from outside, and not from a shotgun. I know that it ricocheted with a high pitched twinge off of something very near my head. I felt the vibration in the air first, and I heard the ricochet before the actual fire of the gun.
It all happened so fast I am sure that I am hit. I start feeling around my chest and arms as I huddle, half stuck out from behind the same planter I hid behind last night. Faith and the kids are stuffed in behind me. I hear a faint whimpering cry. I jerk my head around to look behind me. I look Faith over first and then Kim and then Jason and Kevin. Everyone looks fine but I realize it is Kim weeping and I look down at her hand on Kevin’s belly. It is covered in thick red blood. The little boy’s eyes are crossed and he is deathly still.
I hear my least favorite phrase of the day, by my least favorite person. I stare at Kevin. “I have your little friend Nicholas. Come out now and we shall see who is in charge here. They are right inside…go in and get them out.” Then I hear shuffling on the other side of the doors.
“Faith when this guy comes through the doors , put your shotgun in his gut. If he does anything but shit and piss himself and drop his guns then blow him in half!” I don’t think Mr. Petrova really wants me dead. He is a cruel killer, but he is interested very much so in the fact that I’m a person who has survived a bite wound; or at least that’s what I tell myself as I bum rush him.
I wait until Patrick comes through and Faith has her shotgun planted in him and then I charge through the doors. Mr. Petrova gets a shot off as I knock his arm away. I hit him like a train and bounce him off the c
oncrete. I pull him to one side to ball my fist and hit him as hard as I can in the cheek and he flies again but I don’t let go; knocking us both down and rolling together out from under the awning and into the driveway. I hit him in the face over and over. I crack his nose and blood starts gushing. I hit his right temple. I hit his left cheekbone. Then I hit him again on the right side in the jaw, on the left side in the eye socket, and I have no intention of stopping until he is a lifeless bloody pulp.
“No! S top!” He screams, in a contorted high pitched voice. I know what it is, it is panic. He knows if I hit him too many more times, he will die.
I stop. I know for some reason one day I will regret showing him mercy, but I do anyway. I get off of him and Mr. Petrova lays there, reeling for a long while. He slowly sits up and paws at his face with both his hands. I turn my back on him. When I go back to the doors heaving, Faith has Kim around the shoulders and Chris is clutching at Jason’s hand trying to coax him through the doors.
Patrick is just standing there looking at us all in disbelief. His gun is still in his hand but it is hanging at his side. Jason has a hold of Kevin’s hand and is dragging him limp from behind the planter. I rush up to him and pick the light limp body up and clutch it tight to my chest. I take him to Faith. She looks at me and tears start to form in her eyes. “Is he dead?”
“No, Les…but I…the wound is in a bad place…and there’s no exit.”
“But he is alive.”
“Yes.” I turn from her and carry him through the doors. Nick is resting against the caddy when we walk up, “Glad to see you.” I say to him. When Chris walks, still holding hands with Jason, past Mr. Petrova, the little boy pulls free and runs up and kicks him. Faith takes Kevin from me and Kim takes her shotgun. She and Jason follow close beside Faith with Chris trailing. His rifle now trained behind us towards Patrick and Mr. Petrova.
I order Nick into the car with the rest. As they all climb in I look back at Patrick who has followed us out from under the awning, “Okay, this is how this will happen.” Patrick doesn’t reply, just stares looking pissed off. “We are leaving now. You can stay here and help your boss up off the ground but you better hurry because …”
BLAM The violent explosion rocks me to my knees and I spin to watch a fireball rise from a nearby bus. I can see huge volumes of zombies, literally pouring around the side of the hospital. We have run out of time.
I jump in the driver ’s seat of the over-stuffed car as Patrick sprints faster than I thought he could, to pick up Mr. Petrova. I slam the door, shove the key in the ignition and pull it into overdrive. Faith squeezes my leg with her left hand. Looking at me worried, scared and with a hopeful little smile, still clutching Kevin to her chest. I turn the car and hop the median and scream across the parking lot towards the intersection of Tamiami and Bayshore. We dodge cars, both ruined and pristine, and race away from the mass of zombies, the wave of death, the end.
Acknowledgements: Allow me to start by thanking the many people who have already read this book in one form or another. This project originally began on December 19, 2012 as a post on a writing project page I created on Facebook. Since then, it has grown and changed exponentially and the story would never have turned into this finished product without the encouragement of the many fans of that original page.
It has been quite an adventure over the last four years and along the way I have received an amazing amount of help and advice. I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who took the time and consideration to muddle through different versions of the second, third, and fourth draft of this book. I would especially like to thank Will Johnson for his sage advice on medical situations and issues. I truly could not have written Faith without you. Jennifer Clark for your advice and wit, cheerleading and support of the Facebook page and in all my written pursuits, you are a true friend. Josh Bonwell, who I could actually call my alpha reader, was the first person to experience my idea of what it would be like to be bitten by a zombie. Your reaction will shield me of the curses of a thousand critics, I am sure. Richard Brookman, thank you for your expert advice on guns and gun handling… a subject in which I myself am not at all versed, also, thank you for your help and patience, advice and friendship as I have started to swim out into the waters of the great big world of independent publishing. Ben Kinser, thank you for your support, council and friendship.
I want to leave a special mention for Jacqueline Hanna, Dylan Donovan and all the other readers who took the time to read or attempt to read the goliath fifth draft that inspired me to break the novel up into a trilogy.
Though all characters in this book are entirely fictitious, I will not deny drawing inspiration from some lovely people I once lived with in Sarasota, Florida: Specifically Bryan Byrne, Daniel Jennings, Mellanie Lynn Blust, and all of my Sarasota friends. I also want to thank all of my close friends in Pensacola, Florida and everywhere in the world. Demifou, thank you for the gorgeous cover art.
I want to give a special nod to my Facebook Contestants: Jessica Johnson, Diana Anderson, Jessica Sirios, and Jennifer Clark. Jennifer was the contest winner with her section title: “Forever is a long time to worry.”
I want to thank my mother, Brenda Laudick, who always believed in me. I want to thank my father, Gary Main, for always giving it to me straight. I want to thank my brother, Samuel Main, for teaching me to be tough, whether you meant to or not.
I want to thank my kids for keeping me going in a cruel world. And last…but certainly not least I want to give my biggest and sincerest thanks to my beautiful wife, Bronwyn Main. You are my rock. You are the Editor in Chief, the Head Wife in Charge, the Brains as well as the Looks of this operation. (Sometimes after watching you I don’t really know what I do here.)
About the Author Lynn Edward Main has worked many jobs in his 36 years, including (but not limited to): waiter, pizza delivery guy, retail clerk, pig farm hand, mechanic’s hand, house husband, and travelling soap salesman. Through all these duties, his passion has remained the same. From the time he was a child, he has been putting ideas and fantasies on paper, hoping not for fame and riches, but only that people would enjoy what he had written. Lynn is currently editing the sequel to Zombie Waltz, which will end as a trilogy. He lives in Lakin, Kansas with his wife, Bronwyn and three noisy boys, Evan, Camden and Aiden.
Contact Information: P.O. Box 659, Lakin, KS, 67860-0659
Or e-mail him at: [email protected]
About the Artist Demifou is a freelance artist who has built up their online presence around their artwork focusing on a semi-realistic style. Demifou has strived to create diverse and colorful artwork using all mediums. If you are interested in contacting Demifou about their artwork you can do so at: http://demifouart.tumblr.com/ or you can email them at [email protected]
Also find them on Deviant Art at: http://demifou.deviantart.com
Or on Instagram: @demifou_art