Not Enough To Live By

by Gregory M. Thompson

  We climbed back down into the hallway. Lucy replaced the ladder and allowed the attic flap to spring back into place. “The second day after all the crap started, he drove his pickup over with that safe and told Ryan and me to hide it where no one would find it. He said we were going to need the guns in the coming days. To protect against zombies and people.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “He didn't make it. Said he couldn't stay. He had to get to someplace he called Krakatoa 83.”

  “Never heard of it unless he meant the place where the volcano is.”

  Lucy shook his head. “I doubt it. I got the impression it was a nickname for a place here in the States. Something secret.”

  We ended back in the living room. Ryan saw me with the guns.

  “Mom? You going to let him take those? We need those,” he said.

  “It's okay. It's to help him.” Lucy looked at me. “You're going to bring them back, right?”

  “Yes, of course. If you're in this house, I'll bring them back.”

  “I don't believe him,” the boy said.

  Lucy went over and patted his head. “Don't worry about it. We got plenty of others if he doesn't.”

  “Bring them back,” Ryan said to me sternly.

  “I will.” To both I said, “Thanks again.”

  “Good luck,” Lucy said. It was the nicest thing she said to me since I entered her home.

  I stood at the front door, looking at the zombies collected on her lawn and the street ahead and in the yards adjacent and the yards down the block. The first week the zombies appeared, I honestly thought it wouldn't last but a few days. Someone had this under control, right? There was just a few of them in the beginning. The news reports probably spun the severity of it all through the roof to scare us, to make things out more than they were. But look at them out there now. Thousands more than last week, hundreds more than a few hours ago. Where were they coming from?

  “You going or what?” Lucy asked. She stood by the window. “I can cover you so far. Once you make it around that townhouse, that's it.”

  I burst through the door and went left on the porch to avoid the zombies directly down the porch stairs. On the side of the porch, fewer zombies, but not by much. I climbed over the railing and hopped to the ground.

  I shoved my way through the small group and darted past the townhouse, heading to my front door. Please be safe, Nadine. Please, please, please. Hope for her safety surfaced like a geyser in me, and as I sensed it ready to explode from my pores, I raised the handgun and aimed at the door.

  I knocked once with my fist, then followed that up with three taps of the handgun. I pivoted to the side between the door and the window, hidden from view against the bricks. Seconds excruciatingly ticked by, each moment moving at molasses-like speed. They had to be in there. They had to be. If Abe, Susan, and Nadine weren't, I didn't know what to do next.

  I reached out and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, but I refused to go inside without knowing where they were. My ambush could be negated with an ambush by Abe and Susan.

  With a jerk, I peeked through the window and returned against the wall. From what I could see, no one was in the living room. Everyone was either in the kitchen or upstairs.

  So, I shot the window. Bang! Bang! Bang! Glass shattered and fell in hundreds of shards. I lowered myself under the window and popped up and down to see if that got the attention of Abe or Susan. Or even Nadine.

  After a minute, someone answered. “What the hell are you doing!” It was Abe. His voice told me he was on the second floor.

  “I came for Nadine!” I yelled back. “Let her go!”

  “Or what? You're going to stay a coward and stand out there and do nothing? So, you have a gun. We have Nadine.” He paused. “You can come in any time after we leave.”

  A window slid open above me - the one leading to the bedroom - and a gun poked out and pointed to the ground. I rolled over the bush and landed on the stoop under the awning as Abe's gun fired two bullets into the rocks.

  “I'm sure I missed you!” Abe screamed. “It's real simple, David: leave and no one gets hurt. Stay and both of you will get hurt!”

  “I'm going to give you one last chance, Abe,” I said. “One last chance and one minute to release Nadine. You and Susan don't have to come out, just let Nadine leave on her own, and I won't come in there to get her myself. You don't want me to come in there. I'm starting the count...now!”

  I heard no response to my request, but I counted down anyway. When I got to forty, I pocketed the handgun and raised the shotgun at door level. When I hit twenty, I stood back from the door. “Ten! Nine! Eight!” I had no clue the power of this automatic shotgun; I bent my knees and braced myself. “Four! Three! Two!”

  I hadn't even heard anyone coming down the stairs. I doubted Abe and Susan would send Nadine out. They thought they had the upper hand, being inside and thinking it was two guns to one.

  “ONE!”

  I pulled the trigger expecting one blast to rocket out, but when I released the trigger, three shots pounded the door next to the knob. The casings tinkled on the sidewalk, and the door opened. The recoil of the gun was less than I expected. It bumped against my shoulder, but only slightly. Tomorrow I'd have a bruise for sure, but so far, not bad.

  With the shotgun, I pushed the door open and fired the gun into the living room. Two pictures burst into pieces and tumbled to the floor; the couch exploded with foam; the coffee table lost one of its legs and tipped over.

  Blaublaublaublau...blaublaublaublaublau... One shot after the other. The vibration of the shotgun went to my eyes and everything looked blurry. I had a crazy thought: is this what zombies see when they are in their blood frenzy?

  “Ahhhh!” I heard when I stopped firing. Sounded like Susan.

  My hands tingled, becoming numb from the shaking and heat of the gun. I had to stop, if only for a moment.

  A flash disappeared up the stairs. Then, “I don't know what he's got...”

  I went to the bottom of the stairs. Drops of blood dotted the carpet from the lowest step to the top, and two hand smears stained the railing. I had hit her.

  “Did I get you, Susan?” I asked up the stairs. “I'm soooo sorry.”

  No answer. But I saw their shadows, so I knew they were up there.

  “Listen, I gave you guys a chance. You decided not to take it,” I said. “You should know by now I have more than a gun. I have something tremendous here that, as Susan found out, is hard to protect against once I start firing. Here's what will happen now. You'll let Nadine go, and she and I will get out of here. I won't come up there and start blasting. Because if I do, I will be very, very liberal about it. This thing holds a ton of rounds, and I have another clip ready to go. So, what do you say?”

  Shuffling filtered down the hallway, and one shadow became larger, entering my view on the wall directly ahead of me. The shape and height were Nadine. I was sure of it.

  I was correct. “David, David. Do you really think you can outwit us? You did nothing at the restaurant, so what makes you think I'd believe you would do anything?”

  “That cockiness will get you killed.” Did he really think I was bluffing? I had every intention of walking up those stairs if he didn't comply.

  “You seem to forget that I have Nadine. You take one step up those stairs, I'll put a bullet in her head.” Abe chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I might not shoot her in the head at all. I'll throw her out the window in such a way she won't die. Let the zombies get her. Let them turn her into one. That would be so much worse for you, David.”

  And I suddenly laughed like I heard the funniest joke in the world. My belly strained so hard with amusement I thought I was going to throw up or pee myself. I couldn't control it; what Abe said struck me as hilarious. I couldn't explain it in the moment, nor would I be able to explain it later when I thought about the moments that transpired here.

  “Kill her if you want,” I said sternly. “Make
s no difference to me, and I guarantee you it makes no difference to her. Go ahead, ask her if you want. I'll give you a few seconds. Either way, whether you kill her with a bullet or allow her to be taken by zombies, I'm going to come up the stairs and demolish you and Susan. I won't hesitate. No matter how much you beg for your life, no matter how much you plead for me to resist killing fellow man, I'm going to destroy you in the most painful way possible. You two are the most demented people I've ever met before or after the zombies, and I want to be the one that sends you to hell. Being killed by zombies is too humane for you.”

  With hesitation, I started taking the steps, blasting the shotgun every two seconds at the wall at the top of the stairs. If one of them decided to peek out at me, their head would disappear into a mist of blood. Step, blam, step step, blam, step step, blam. The plaster exploded in every direction; if Abe was around the corner, he was surely getting splashed with the stuff.

  I stopped at the stop of the stairs and glanced around the wall. Clear. I stepped out and fired the shotgun ahead of me. The bookcase that took me six hours to build with my unskilled hands shattered under the buckshot. I felt bad the books were in the middle of this: pieces of paperbacks rained off the shelf. After ten feet, the hallway turned right and led to the office and the bedroom.

  “David!” Nadine called out. She was in the bedroom.

  “Here!”

  “They're getting away!”

  I ran into the bedroom in time to see Abe's backside climbing out of the window. He shimmied along the ledge and found steady footing on the awning over the front door. I aimed at Abe the best I could as I darted to the window, firing the shotgun the whole way. The glass blew outward, and some of it embedded in Abe's neck. When I reached the window, I fired again. Bits of awning crashed below.

  But he had leapt to the ground just in time, transitioning into roll to absorb the fall. I shot at him again five or six times, letting the automatic take over for the moment. A miss each time. He sprinted away, the buckshot creating divots behind him.

  I turned and headed for the bedroom door. “I have to go after them,” I said.

  Nadine stopped me. “No, you don't. They're gone.”

  I shook my head and lightly pushed Nadine away. “I have to.” I gazed into her eyes, and I think she saw my determination, saw that this was something I had to do. “They don't deserve to live after how they treated you and me. How they've treated the world so far. People like that have no regard for humanity.”

  “But what you are doing...” Nadine sat on the bed. “I don't totally understand, but if you feel you need to go after them... I don't want you to turn into them.”

  “I won't. I promise.” I kissed her on the cheek wondering if that promise was too strong to keep. “Don't worry, I'll return. They're afraid of me I'm pretty sure. Afraid of my...of my...”

  “Recklessness?”

  I smiled. “It's what works with them.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too. Can you make sure we are packed with everything we need for the trip to Rend City?”

  Nadine nodded and stood. “Promise me something else,” she said, taking my face in her hands.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Promise me that no matter what happens, you'll take the Fredsons with you.”

  “Lucy and Ryan?”

  “Yes. They are wonderful and you'll need her.”

  It was a strange request at this moment, and I really needed to get out there and after Abe and Susan. “Of course. They're the ones that gave me this automatic shotgun.”

  “Great,” Nadine said, heading downstairs. I followed, picked up the extra clip for the shotgun, and gave Nadine a deep kiss on the mouth. She pulled me close and squeezed my lower back as she returned the kiss. “I'll get things ready.”

  I went outside and faced the direction Abe and Susan fled. At the street, I caught a fleeting glance of two people disappearing between houses about half a block down on my right. They could be none other than Abe and Susan. So, I ran in that direction, ignoring any zombies in my way. The throng inhabiting this street was beyond understanding. Somebody somewhere had to know why this happened and where they were coming from. I couldn't imagine they knew how to breed.

  But I had other concerns, so if they did get in my way, the shotgun had no issues assisting me.

  I entered the space where the two people had went, and ahead, I confirmed that Abe and Susan were those people. I saw them hobble up the front porch stairs of a house, kick the door down, and go inside. With Susan hurt - probably shot or at least in extreme discomfort - and Abe injured from glass in his skin, they couldn't continue running for long. I was shocked Abe hadn't killed Susan and left her behind.

  The swell of zombie noises grew behind me, and I hurried to the other side of the street. If I cared, I would have been concerned about the growing number of undead collecting behind me. But I only cared about one thing: catching Abe and Susan.

  The house. I had an idea.

  I sprinted from car to car, truck to truck, rummaging through glove compartments and trunks until I found what I was looking for. Finally, after the sixth truck, I found flares.

  I bolted up the porch and used the shotgun on the door so if Abe or Susan secured it from the inside, they wasted their time. Looking back, the zombies liked what I did. They started coming my way. Next, I shot out the windows on the porch. Through one of the windows, I watched Susan dive for cover behind a couch. She fired back, but the bullet missed by ten feet or so.

  I lit a flare and tossed it inside. That got the attention of the creatures, and they started strolling inside.

  I left the porch, shoving and shooting zombies as I went around the side of the house, blasting out windows. “Follow me!” I screamed at the zombies. When I reached the back of the house, I performed the same shotgun action on the rear door and threw in another bright flare. Perfect.

  Most of the zombies managed to get up the few steps and enter the house, though some weren't interested in that and instead came towards me. I shot a few in the face as I made my way back to the front of the house. With the final flare sizzling in my hand, I chucked it on the roof of the house. A few of the zombies around me noticed and changed direction.

  I returned to the space between the houses and watched my handiwork in action. The zombies scrutinized the sputtering, red flashes with curiosity and, as expected, went towards them, entering the house that contained Abe and Susan.

  One of the top windows on the second floor was kicked outward, and Abe emerged on the slanted roof. He surveyed the scene before him. The zombies surrounded the house in inescapable multitudes. Their thickness would not allow anyone to get through; they'd swarm someone in seconds if that someone was stupid enough to try and get through.

  A scream inside the house crashed the air. Susan.

  Then Abe saw me. I gave him a sarcastic salute off my forehead. It was over for them.

  I headed back to Nadine.

  Would I have killed them? I'd like to say I wouldn't have, but when faced with the prospect of Nadine dying at the hands of Abe or Susan, who knows what I'd have done if I saw them again. I could have made a conscious effort to enter that house, to seek them out, and to make them pay for their brutality. Not sure if what they did to me and Nadine would be considered crimes in this world now. Assuming they were - and they were to me - were they crimes against the world or just crimes against me? With no police or judges to determine what's wrong and right, the world was left to determine that on its own. For most people, knowing what was right and wrong was distinguishable; for the rest, they need to answer for choosing wrong. Was I the one to help with that? When it came to Nadine or me, I could probably help. But why me when I could manipulate the beings causing so much hell on Earth to do that for me?

  BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

  I was ten feet from my front door when I heard the gunshot. A single crack echoing in the air around me. And it came from inside my t
ownhouse.

  When I barged through the door, Lucy stood to the side of Nadine's chair with a gun in her hand. A trail of smoke rose from the barrel of the gun. The sound of the gun reverberated in my ear. Was it in my ear or in my mind? Because all the fears of what that gunshot was filled my body up with dread as soon as I saw the scene before me.

  Nadine sat slumped in her chair. Her precious chair. Her head lolled to the side, her eyes rolled up into head. Blood trickled from the bullet wound in her temple. It moved down the side of her face like a river, emptying onto her shoulder and dark blue blouse like a tributary. Was she...was she dead? Was Nadine without life? Was it true that I now stood in my own home, where I spent years with my wife, my Nadine, my love, in the presence of death? Where I had never wanted death to happen?

  I followed the angle of the bullet to the gun, then up the barrel to Lucy's hand, then to Lucy's face. She had tears in her eyes, and she continued to stare at Nadine.

  “You don't look at her!” I screamed. “You take your eyes off of her, you monster!”

  I dashed over to her and shoved her against the closest wall. I planted my forearm against her neck and pushed. With a jerk, I pushed harder. Her neck gave and kept giving me what I wanted, which was constriction. Lucy's breath came out wheezy and slow.

  “You're...hurt...ing...” she managed.

  “I know I am! I mean to hurt you!” With my free hand, I grabbed the arm with the gun and pounded her hand on the wall until the gun fell away. “Why did you shoot her! You had no right!”

  She tried to speak, but my pressure on her windpipe hindered that. I released a little bit. Only a little because she didn't have long to live.

  “She wanted...it,” Lucy forced out when she caught her breath.

  “You lie! You're just like all the other assholes in the world. You want everyone else's stuff so you can survive.” I kicked the gun on the floor away and pulled out the handgun Lucy had given me earlier. “Seems fitting, doesn't it? You shoot Nadine, I shoot you?”

  “No, David. This is not what she wanted!”

  I placed the end of the gun against her temple. “How do you know what she wanted?”