Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  Lizzy reached above her between the floor joists and easily pushed up the floor boards. She pulled them out and handed them down one by one to her little brother. She then stretched to fold the carpet up so that she was staring up at clothes hanging above her.

  She looked down at her brother and smiled. He looked up at her with wide eyes, his mouth agape.

  * * * * *

  Finding the passage out of the basement and into Lizzy's room changed everything. Their plans had to be completely revised, more than once.

  Their first revised plan was the easiest. They'd both climb up to Lizzy's room, then Lizzy would sneak down the hallway and shut the hallway door, cutting them off from their parents and giving Lizzy and Brandon free reign over the bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a couple of hall closets from which to gather supplies, and ample windows from which to monitor the outside world (on three sides of the house, at least) so they could plan their next move.

  Of course, even the easiest plan wasn't without its problems. When Lizzy was last in the house, the giant window in the living room had been shattered, exposing their home completely to more of those creatures coming in undetected. For all they knew, there were dozens of those things in the house. They didn't think so because they'd have likely heard them walking above them at some point, but not every part of the house had a part of the basement beneath it, so they couldn't be too sure.

  Another problem was that the door leading from the corridor where the bedrooms were located to the hallway where their parents were beating on the basement door didn't have a lock on it as the one at the top of the basement stairs did. Brandon reasoned that the lack of a lock probably wouldn't matter. As far as they knew, so far their parents hadn't even tried the knob. They probably wouldn't think to turn the doorknob on the hallway door. Regardless they agreed it would probably be best to put a dresser from one of the bedrooms in front of the door to be sure.

  Unfortunately, the plan never had a chance to play out. They dragged a table beneath Lizzy's closet and put the chair on it to make the climb into the house easier. But Lizzy quickly realized she couldn't fit through the small opening. Then Brandon tried, and he barely fit, scraping skin off his chest and shoulders in order to make it happen.

  Back to the drawing board.

  Obviously, Lizzy would need to leave through one of the doors. They had to come up with a plan that allowed Brandon to draw the dead away from one of the doors with as few risks as possible. The scheme they concocted was much more complicated than the ones before.

  Brandon would squeeze into Lizzy's room and shut the door at the end of the hall as originally planned and gather supplies as originally discussed. Then in his room he would find his newest remote control vehicle, a monster-truck style police dune buggy complete with sirens and lights, and use it in the backyard to draw the creatures at the backdoor as far away as possible, and he'd try to do it from the safety of the window in his bedroom. Once the zombies were gone, he'd leave his room, knock lightly on the outside door for Lizzy to open it, then both would head back into the house via his bedroom window to plan their next move.

  There were lots of foreseeable problems. What if the R/C vehicle no longer worked? He hadn't played with it in more than a year. How far can the vehicle get from the remote before it is out of range? What if it's not far enough? What if there are more of these creatures than expected and the siren on the vehicle simply draws them in? What if the creatures at the door don't even take the bait?

  The plan was far-fetched and full of holes.

  But it was all they had.

  Plan B was for Brandon to leave Lizzy behind and bring back help if he could. Both hoped Plan B wouldn't be necessary. Neither of them wanted to be without the other.

  At the agreed-upon time, the siblings said their goodbyes and, despite both fighting back tears, each assured the other that they'd be reunited within minutes. Brandon shimmied painfully up through the hole and with one last glance down into the basement, gave his sister a thumbs up.

  At first, the colors of his sister's bedroom, the bright pinks and yellows, stabbed his senses, a complete reversal of the drab basement. He ignored the sensation and went straight to the window and peeked out the blinds. Sunlight attacked his eyes. It took a bit for his sight to adjust. When it did, his thoughts on what he saw outside were mixed. He was glad to see there weren't hundreds of zombies flooding the streets, but at least a half dozen staggered or stood about.

  He left Lizzy's room and, before heading to the end of the hall to shut the door, he went quietly across to his room to check out the backyard. Most of the basement door, as well as the creatures on it, were beyond his view from his window, but he could hear them pounding on the door. So far no other creatures inhabited the backyard, at least the parts he could see. He looked at the driveway leading to the alley and wondered if he'd be able to drive the R/C buggy down it and around the corner from here. It seemed to be quite a distance. Plus if the creatures outside moved as fast as his mom and dad had, they'd probably overtake the slower-moving miniature dune buggy long before it reached the alley. The odds of pulling this off seemed stacked against him.

  When he turned to leave, he found a package of cookies on his desk he'd forgotten to bring back to the kitchen. He stuffed five of them in his mouth greedily. They were long stale but tasted like heaven.

  He left the room and started moving slowly to the end of the hall. As he went, the sound of his parents pounding grew louder and louder. He reached the door without incident and grasped the doorknob. But he didn't shut the door. He listened to his parents, the two people who'd loved him unconditionally his entire life. Despite the weeks of pounding and the moaning, he still loved them, too. And he knew he couldn't leave without seeing them one more time.

  Silently he released the knob and edged his eyes around the corner. He didn't see his parents. He saw piles of grotesque, decaying flesh draped upon brittle skeletons.

  Brandon's heart reacted, his pulse quickened, and he gasped ever-so-slightly.

  And then what was once his parents turned to look at him.

  * * * * *

  Lizzy stood below the door leading into the backyard and waited. She wondered if she'd be able to hear the siren of the small R/C vehicle from here. More than once since they'd been in the basement (when her parents were still with them) they'd heard sirens of emergency vehicles rampaging down the street all the way in front of the house, but this was just a toy. If she could hear it, she should have heard it by now. Something must be wrong.

  She listened to the pounding on the door above her and knew that if the plan worked then the pounding should stop abruptly. She waited and her own heartbeat seemed to match the rhythm.

  And then the pounding stopped. But not from above her head. Her parents had stopped beating on the door at the top of the basement steps.

  Lizzy's head whipped around and she looked up the steps across the room. She stopped breathing.

  She walked cautiously to the bottom of the stairway. "Brandon?" she called up. There was no reply.

  She stepped up onto the first step, but then turned and darted back to the table and chair beneath her closet. She climbed them and stuck her head into the closet. She couldn't see anything because Brandon had closed the closet door, which had actually been part of the plan. If something went wrong and Brandon had to leave Lizzy alone, the closet door being shut would offer at least some protection against something coming through the hole after her.

  "Brandon!" she called loudly into the darkness. Again Brandon didn't answer her. "Brandon, please!" she pleaded into the stale air. Still nothing.

  She started to cry as she scampered down to the floor. She crossed back to the stairway, grabbing the deadly club Brandon had made for her. She ascended the steps leading up to the house slowly, sobbing as she climbed. As she stepped onto the landing and turned to the door, thoughts raced through her mind. Thoughts like, I should never have let him go up there by himself, or Now I'm all alo
ne, or This is my fault!, or It should have been me.

  As imperceptibly as possible, she popped the doorknob lock and slid back the deadbolt.

  With tears streaming down her face, and remorse and self-deprecation streaming everywhere else, Lizzy reached for the doorknob.

  But it turned on its own. The door creaked open for the first time in many weeks.

  About the same time a group of medium-level army officers, meeting at an abandoned car dealership in a small town in South Michigan, were voting on a motion to refer to a large portion of the upper United States as the North Central Corridor; and the same day Dr. Thaddeus Palmer was to begin deconstructing his barn (his father's barn) during which he'd find a heavy, five-foot piece of rusty rebar, Brandon Glasgow opened a door leading into the basement, flooding with sister with light and surprise.

  He looked down into her stunned eyes, red and puffy from crying, a crude, nail-filled club raised clumsily above her.

  "Sorry," Brandon apologized. "There was a change of plans."

  Chapter 4

  L OOK AT YOU, TURTLEMAN, you fat, ugly fuck!

  Turtleman managed to open his encrusted eyes and gaze at the giant woman's head above him. She slurped a frosty, pink drink from a straw, her eyes frozen in astonishment. She stared down at him contemptuously. Always staring. Always cutting him down.

  "Hey, fuck you," Turtleman squeaked through his dry throat.

  Then, "I'm losing weight, you know."

  And later, "Why don't you slurp on this, bitch!" He tried to grab his crotch as he said it, but his arm barely moved.

  I'd have to find it first, fat ass, the giant head shot back. Columbus couldn't navigate those jelly rolls to locate your scrawny, little pecker.

  "Fuck you," he managed again after a while. He closed his eyes and thought of home, back when he was still Harry Tuttleman.

  Harry hated home. His grandmother was mean and smelled of piss and shit even before she died. The fact she was a smelly, rotting corpse who wanted him dead was pretty par for the course.

  He'd come to live with his grandmother (and her never-less-than seven cats) about five years ago when his fat whore-of-a-mother dropped him off and never returned. All his mother had ever done was smack him around, so good riddance. His grandmother used to hit him, too, but at least she couldn't hit as hard.

  Harry's father died in some war in some sand-drenched country when Harry was really little. But good ol' dad didn't die heroically on the battlefield, jumping on a live grenade or some shit like that. Oh no. He was a Tuttleman. He died of a heart attack while choking down a donut, working his assigned desk job. He was too fat, slow, and incompetent to be anywhere near the action.

  Living with his crotchety, senile grandmother wasn't much better than living with his whore-of-a-mother. All Harry's hopes and dreams had rested on what his grandmother threatened him with; that is, that she'd cancel her life insurance policy and leave him with nothing. If she had a life insurance policy, then maybe once the old bag kicked the bucket, he'd inherit a large amount of money and finally be able to leave this shithole town.

  Harry even considered helping her along, but he didn't know how to kill her without screwing something up and getting caught. He was a Tuttleman, after all.

  And of course, damn his Tuttle-luck, she waits until the whole world goes to fuck before she dies, leaving him jack-fucking-squat.

  But he paid the bitch back. Real good.

  Once she got sick and it became apparent she was going to die, he closed the door to her bedroom so she couldn't get out when she woke up again. Once he knew she was reanimated (when she started pounding on her bedroom door), then he started having fun.

  First, he berated her through her door, calling her all the names she used to call him and more. Stuff he'd have never gotten away with when she was alive. Not without a smack to the side of the head.

  Then he got a GREAT idea. He climbed up the hide-a-way ladder leading up to the attic and kicked a hole in the ceiling of her bedroom.

  He found an old door up there and laid it across the ceiling joists to lessen the danger of falling through. Then he pulled up a chair and watched and laughed at her and called her names. She would just stare up at him through the hole, moaning, reaching up with her boney arms.

  Sometimes he'd throw things down at her head. Other times he'd spit on her. A couple of times he stood up, lowered his pants, and pissed on her. She never once dodged or even blinked, completely oblivious to the warm, salty urine pouring down her face and through her hair.

  And just when berating her was getting old, and being cooped up in the house while all the crazies tore up the neighborhood was becoming mediocre, he thought of a new form of entertainment. It came to him when he was watching a DVD for like the fiftieth time (when there was still electricity). He lazed on the couch, shoveling beef ravioli out of a can, and one of the cats jumped up on his lap for the fourth time, sniffing the air. Once again he brutally shoved the nuisance off his lap and onto the floor.

  All of the cats had gathered around him, anticipating food. You would think they'd have learned not to come to him for food. He hadn't fed them or given them water for weeks. How the hell the little shits were still alive was a mystery, although all of them were noticeably malnourished.

  Harry hated those cats, if hate were a strong enough word. Probably because his grandmother had loved them so much. More than she'd loved Harry.

  And it was when Harry was staring around at the thin pupils staring back at him, his lips plastered with cheaply-manufactured marinara, and trying to figure out what to do with the useless rodents (burn them, stab them, bury them alive) that the pounding on his grandmother's bedroom door, the pounding he'd long since relegated to the back of his mind, registered again. He turned his head to it, as if it were a new sound he'd just noticed, then back to the cats, and smiled.

  He knew how to have some fun with granny.

  Over the next week, he took the cats one at a time into the attic, some of them clawing him up pretty good in the process, and dropped them down to his grandmother. The kitties, which were once her most precious babies, she now chased around the room like a hungry, ravenous animal. Sometimes it took her a while to catch the cats. She'd chase them for hours, toppling furniture and knocking pictures off the walls. But inevitably, either because she had the feline impossibly cornered or because the starving, emaciated cat just ran out of energy (something his dead grandmother never did), she'd catch it.

  Harry would sit above the room, laughing and urging her on, the most entertainment he'd seen in quite a while.

  And when granny finally did catch one of her precious babes, she wouldn't pet it or cuddle it or try to calm it. And the cats, likely sensing their impending doom, in spite of their weakened states, would scratch and claw and bite her hands and face the entire time they were being lifted up to her mouth. And when Harry's grandmother finally sank her teeth into their furry coats, they would exhibit a scream Harry would have thought unlikely from such small creatures. They would fight and wiggle and bite harder on her nose and cheeks, but to no avail. Eventually, they'd stop moving, allowing granny to cover herself with blood, gore, and fur with no resistance at all.

  It reminded Harry of some Greek play they'd read in school; something about some guy feeding his brother's children to his brother for some reason. Maybe the brother had had sex with his wife or something. Most of that Greek stuff was usually boring, but other times it was cool. Like that guy who gouged out his own eyes because the dumbass accidentally had sex with his own mother. Awesome.

  Of course, it made Harry imagine having sex with his fat, whore mom, and that made him want to vomit.

  And thinking of those plays made Harry think of school. He hated school.

  It used to not be so bad. The other kids had picked on him for as long as he could remember because of his weight. But he got used to it, for the most part. At least he wasn't at home.

  But then two years ago, Reg Rollins t
ransferred from another school, and he took bullying to a whole new level.

  Reg quickly became the football team's star quarterback and the most popular guy in school. Once he achieved that level of fame, every nerd, hippy, emo, and loser flew into his radar. Demeaning nicknames were created, books were knocked out of arms, lockers were ransacked and booby-trapped, wedgies were dispensed.

  But all that paled in comparison to the treatment dished out to Harry.

  Harry had always been called "Turtleman." After all, it was kind of a natural derogatory transition from Tuttleman.

  But Reg was the first to make a song out of it.

  Turtleman, Turtleman, fat as fuck.

  Turtleman, Turtleman, likes to suck.

  If you wanna get blown by a fat-ass slob,

  Turtleman, Turtleman will shine your knob.

  Reg first barked out the tune between classes in a crowded hallway. Harry was looking for his American history book in his locker when he heard it. He turned to see Reg laughing. And so was everyone else who'd heard it—jocks, cheerleaders, preps; nerds, loners, headbangers—everybody. Even Julie from homeroom, who Harry liked and who actually treated him like a real person.

  People weren't just calling him fat anymore. They were calling him "faggot" and "queerbait." Other guys were grabbing their crotches and asking if he wanted some. Jocks told him not to use so much teeth next time, yelling the request into open doorways where Harry was attending class. The bathrooms were covered with graffiti detailing all sorts of explicit homosexual acts the "Turtleman Fag" would perform for one's corn dog, a piece of cake, or just for fun.