by Alex Apostol
He turned to where Luke was frozen and called out for him to follow. Luke walked a few paces behind the two blood-stained men as he contemplated running back home the second they busted open the next door. It wasn’t like he was helping them anyway.
There was no surprise in the Ramirens’ apartment. Liam knew what their fate had been days ago. Mr. and Mrs. Ramiren shuffled around the house, parts of their faces torn away, complete chunks missing in a hallowed out, bloody mess. Little Ahmed hissed and growled as he snapped his teeth, untouched except for a single bite on his left arm.
Liam felt a sting in his eyes and a dryness in his throat. They’d suffered horrific, slow, painful deaths. Three quick shots of his arrows and the family was on the ground and finally at peace. Liam took a deep breath through his nose as he gripped his longbow in one hand. Another apartment cleared.
The door to the Shermans’ apartment opened slowly. Ralph walked out and locked the door with his key behind him.
“Oh, hey guys,” he said and then stopped once he looked up at Liam, Zack, and Luke. He took a moment to digest the sight of the three men, armed with a sword, a bow, and a golf club, wet blood staining the clothes of two of them. Ralph’s eyes lingered on Zack and all his make-shift riot gear. “What’s going on?” he asked with a shaky laugh.
“We’re clearing out the apartments, y’know, so it’s safe for everyone left,” Zack said while he smacked the side of his sword against the palm of his hand like some grand punisher.
Ralph nodded slowly with wide eyes. “O…K…” he said in a reassuring voice, like he would use if he were talking to a child. “I’m just going to get my mother-in-law from downstairs.”
“Is everyone all right in your place?” Liam asked as he lowered his bow to hold it behind his legs in hopes of easing the concerned look on Ralph’s face. The last thing they needed to deal with on top of everything else was a panic.
“All right?”
“Yeah. All right.” Zack answered with bite. “Everyone alive and well in there? No one’s been bit or scratched or turned into a flesh-eating zombie or nothing like that?” He wanted to get back to clearing the apartments out. It was almost impossible for him to stand still with the adrenaline that coursed through his body, so he swayed on his feet while his finger felt ran along the edge of his sword’s blade.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone’s good.”
Liam gave a constrained smile and the group of three walked on towards the stairs.
Ralph shook his head and laughed to himself, but didn’t move to go downstairs. He pictured walking into his mother-in-law’s apartment to find her dead, or worse…dead and hungry. His eyes shifted down both ends of the airy hallway and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He had an undeniable feeling that someone was watching him, but as far as he could tell he was alone.
“Hey, guys, wait up!” he called and jogged down the stairs to the first floor. He ran right into Luke’s short, solid frame.
Luke gyrated awkwardly with his golf club raised halfway.
“Shh,” Liam hushed as he stretched out his lanky arms to prevent anyone from stepping down. All four looked at each other, brows furrowed and dripping wet with sweat.
“Jerry?” Liam called out.
He was met with an eerie silence after the echo of his voice dispersed. A breeze rushed through the hallway and broke up the thickness in the air.
“Yup,” a rough voice answered.
Liam lowered his arms and gave a feeble smile. “All right, Jer?” he called out as he hopped off the bottom step.
“Can’t complain,” Jerry Middleton said from his patio, where he sat in a plastic chair with a loaded Remington 870 Express Pistol Grip lying in his lap.
“We’re going to be entering the apartments to see if anyone is infected, so if you hear anything odd, it’s just us.” Liam hoped he sounded reassuring, because inside he felt like he was on the verge of having a panic attack. He struggled to keep his voice steady.
Once again there was silence.
The group of four men looked at one another. Zack shrugged his shoulders and then turned to face a door with the number 614 on it.
Jerry emerged from his apartment and gave a nod to each of them. Liam gave a weak, distracted smiles in return. Luke reserved all his concentration for keeping the contents of his stomach down, so he only raised his hand as he took heavy breaths. Jerry hiked up his baggy sweatpants, his white tank top tucked in tight.
Jerry shifted his shotgun from one hand to the other. “Well, my place is clear,” he said. There was no emotion on his aged, wrinkled face.
“And we know the Goldsteins aren’t in theirs,” Ralph Sherman said as he eyed Jerry. He waited for any sign that Jerry was either proud or ashamed of gunning the couple down, but the old man’s face was stone cold and still.
“Do you want to check in on your mum first?” Liam asked Ralph, but Ralph shook his head, his eyes still locked on Jerry.
“Let’s do hers last.” He wanted to put off facing whatever was behind her door for as long as he could. If she was dead, Sally would never forgive him. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to forgive himself either.
“That just leaves our fraternity brethren.” Zack pointed his crowbar at apartment 614.
“Wait. Does anyone know their names?” Liam asked, finally removing his bow from behind his legs.
“Nuh-uh.”
“Nope.”
“What does it matter?”
Silence from Jerry.
“It’s just,” Liam started. “I can’t just…” He couldn’t finish his thought.
Zack looked at Liam with wild, crazy eyes that said he was ready to kill again. Luke stared as fear overtook his round, dark eyes. Ralph stood with his hands in the pocket of his plaid pajama bottoms to conceal the fact that they were shaking. Jerry couldn’t be read.
“Ralph needs a weapon,” Liam finally pulled himself together to say.
“Oh, shit, right.” Zack handed Ralph the crowbar. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Ralph took the long metal tool in his hands and examined it. The hooked end looked menacing, like its one purpose in life was to bury itself deep into a skull. He placed it in the door jam and applied a small amount of pressure to it.
Was everyone expecting him to be the one to kill the two college boys? Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. They were only two years younger than Ralph. He knew because they’d once asked him to buy them beer and when he said no they asked him what was the difference if they waited another six months or not? Ralph had tossed each of them a beer from his fridge and told them to find someone else if they wanted more.
“Just do it already,” Zack exhaled.
“We’re right here,” Liam said. “Just open and step out of the way.”
Ralph nodded. Open and step out of the way. Got it. He could do that. The feeling of the door popping opening from his own force was foreign and a little thrilling. A quick smile took over his face, but it didn’t have a chance to stay for long.
XV.
Fifteen disparate, changed faces—fifteen college students with various majors and diverse backgrounds from all over the country gawked at the five men with glazed over, yellowing eyes and gnashed red teeth. A few turned away to devour the bloodied entrails that splayed out from the mangled corpse on the floor, but the majority staggered to rise to their feet as they trained their bloodshot eyes on the sacks of fresh meat at the door.
“Holy Christ,” Luke whispered from the back of the group.
They were the last words spoken before the men charged into the two bedroom apartment.
Zack Kran was like an apocalyptic warrior as he charged ahead of the rest to start the harrowing battle against the risen dead. He wielded his sword like a trained knight. Each slice happened in slow motion, as if time itself wanted him to savor the victory of another zombie back in its rightful place. He imagined himself as the son of a Greek God, his monumental skills inborn. He would never a
dmit, even to himself, that he acquired them from hours of practice in front of the full length mirror in the back of his comic book store when it was empty of customers.
A few paces behind, Liam Scott shut down his mind and let his instincts take over. It was the only way he knew how to get out of the zombie infested apartment alive. And he had to make it back to Christine. Their apartment was directly above. She had no idea the degree of horror that lie below her feet. Her porcelain face, with its cute dimples that pinched at the corners of her mouth when she gave a little, coy smile, blazed in Liam’s mind as he pulled an arrow from the head of a fallen corpse and turned around on his knee to pierce the skull of another before it could grasp his t-shirt to drag him into its red-stained mouth.
Liam shot one arrow after another as he moved with the precision he’d perfected with over two decades of training. The lightness of his weapon was an unnatural contrast to the heavy bodies that collapsed to the floor moments after his arrow penetrated their skulls to hit their brains.
Next to Liam, Ralph Sherman swung the thin crowbar like a bat. It struck a young female with one arm and a shredded leg in the temple. There was a moment of exhilaration as the sound of her skull crunched from the sharp blow of his own sheer force. As the weight of the body dropped, it pulled the crowbar from Ralph’s fingers. His stomach dove with it. He reached down to yank the weapon loose, but it barely moved. Suppressing the urge to panic, he placed his slipper covered foot on the female’s head and applied all one hundred and forty-two pounds of his weight.
The head felt porous and spongey, giving slightly with each small bounce of his foot. He gripped the crowbar and yanked it back, the way he used to when he started up the lawn mower when he was a teenager. It didn’t work, just like it hadn’t then. The crowbar’s hook was still lodged in the skull. Ralph readjusted his grip on the bar and jiggled it back and forth to loosen it. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see the ravage eyes of a large male in a football jersey as it opened its mouth inches from Ralph’s face.
There was a loud bang and the enclosing zombie’s head exploded, a spray of thick blood camouflaged Ralph’s face and chest. Broken teeth and skull bone shot out like shrapnel. Ralph exhaled as he doubled over from simultaneous shock, disgust, and relief.
His soft brown eyes met Jerry Middleton’s for a brief moment. He hoped they conveyed how thankful he was to him for saving his life. If that college frat boy turned monstrous cannibal had gotten ahold of him it would have been all over for Sally and Lilly. They couldn’t survive without him. The thought made his heart want to race right out of his chest.
The sound of Jerry’s pistol grip shotgun boomed again and again as it obliterated four standing targets. He stood in the center of the apartment to get a view of the entire living room and kitchen. There was no way one of those things was going to get past him to infect any of the survivors in the building. Over his dead body would he allow it.
Hot breath beat against the back of Jerry’s neck. He spun around and shoved the barrel of his 12 gauge into a hardened stomach. Luke raised his arms in the air and squeezed his eyes shut. When he breathed out, flecks of spit flew from his lips.
Jerry turned back to the room, which was almost cleared except for two stragglers that wouldn’t go down without a fight. He blew the head off one and hit the other in the leg, giving Ralph enough time to swing his crowbar and hit it in the temple. Jerry turned back to face Luke, who lowered his arms slowly and took quick shallow breaths. He snorted at the pathetic, sniveling man in front of him and shook his head. “Coward,” Jerry grumbled as he moved out of the way so the others could vacate the apartment.
The white walls were painted red with the blood of the dead. Luke stared off into the room long after the others had moved on to stand in front of Ralph’s mother-in-law’s apartment door, the last one to be checked.
He wasn’t a coward. He was protecting himself, preserving himself, so he could see his family again. That’s what a good man would do. A good man would be there for his family, like Liam was. All at once, Luke realized he had to get to his ex-wife and daughter before it was too late. He closed the door to 614 and joined the others. He kept his distance and averted his eyes in case Jerry tried to shame him again for tapping into his basic human instincts of survival.
Ralph tried to swallow as he stared at Marianne Dunbar’s door, but it felt like there was a rock wedged in his throat. “Let’s get this over with.” He meant to say it as normally as possible, but it came out in a raspy whisper.
There was no doubt in his mind what he would find behind that door. Marianne was dead. He was sure of it. There was no way she could have survived everything, especially with what he just saw in the apartment diagonal to hers.
Jerry cleared his throat loudly and shifted on his feet.
Ralph was pulled from his vision of Marianne as a rotting, walking corpse and, instead, thought about the last time he’d seen her alive.
XVI.
“What is that old man doing now?” Ralph Sherman asked as he rolled over in bed.
“I don’t know, but he’s going to wake up the baby if he doesn’t shut up,” Sally answered with pique and discontent.
She’d been up half the night with Lilly because of the partying college boys downstairs and now she was up at the crack of dawn because some old geezer couldn’t wait a few hours to nail something to his door. Right on cue, she heard the baby cry out for attention and a bottle. Sally rolled her eyes, not at the needs of her child but at the man who woke her up.
Ralph stayed in bed. He rolled over to face away from Sally.
“Oh, no,” she said as she poked him in the back. “If I have to get up with the baby, then you have to go downstairs and check on my mother.”
“Why do I have to check on her? She’s your mother,” he said into his pillow.
“Fine, but then you have to get the baby, change her diaper, and feed her, but just a fair warning, her morning diaper is usually a poopy one so have fun with that.”
“OK, all right, I’ll go check on your mom,” Ralph huffed as he threw the covers off.
Sally was pleased. If she’d have had to go downstairs she would have felt compelled to change out of her warm, cozy pajamas and do something with the matted, long mess of red and blonde hair that sat in a bun on top of her head.
Ralph pulled on the pair of green plaid pajama pants he found on the floor and gave a dramatic sigh of exasperation. He looked over at Sally, who stared back at him. His eyes begged for her to do all the work while he went back to sleep.
“No,” was all she said as she pointed towards the door. When she saw his fallen face she softened and picked up the babbling baby in the crib next to their bed. “I’ll make some biscuits and gravy when you get back!’ she called after him.
Ralph scuffed up his dishwater blond hair and shuffled in his camoflauge house slippers down the flight of stairs and over to Marianne’s door. He passed by Jerry Middleton, who nodded in his direction. As irritated as Ralph was with Jerry for waking him up, he didn’t give him a piece of his mind about it. Something about Jerry reminded Ralph of his dad back in California. It made him not want to say anything to him at all.
He hadn’t seen his dad since the big fight right before he left for Navy boot camp after high school. He thought about going back home when his four years were up to try to make things right again, but he met Sally through a group of sailors on another ship and after six months together they were married and she was pregnant.
Before they even became a family, Ralph felt closer to Sally than he ever had with his own and knew how important it was for her to go back to Indiana to help her mother after her dad died. It made no sense to deny his wife time spent with her own family just because he didn’t care to see his. So after they were discharged from the Navy, Ralph and a seven months pregnant Sally drove from Norfolk, Virginia to Chesterton, Indiana, and that’s what brought Ralph to Sally’s mother’s doorstep at least once a day to make
sure she was still alive and breathing.
Ralph knocked and waited for Marianne to hobble over to the door and answer it. He heard her approach as the rubber soles of her slipper-covered feet scraped at the fake wood linoleum. Her hands pressed on the door as she straightened her slightly hunched back to look through the peep hole. Even though Ralph couldn’t see any of this as it happened, he knew it was Marianne’s routine before she opened for anyone, per her daughter’s request. One time Marianne hadn’t adhered to the rules and got a long lecture from Sally on why it was important to not open the door for strangers at her age.—a phrase Marianne hated.
“Hello, Ralph,” Marianne said and then turned back into her apartment to leave him in the hallway. “Sally send you?”
“Of course. She wanted to make sure Jerry wasn’t beating you to death with his hammer.”
Marianne snorted and then went to the kitchen to make tea in the new Keurig machine Sally got for her. It was the first time Ralph laid eyes on it and he immediately wondered how much it had cost him, and also why he was making his coffee in an ancient Mr. Coffee machine while Marianne got a brand new one that she couldn’t figure out how to use. He walked over and helped her put the K-cup into the holder and shut it.
“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said with a wrinkled smile. Her thin, silver, curled hair stuck up in all directions. She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up on her button nose as she tried to work the machine again to make Ralph a cup of tea as well.
It amazed Ralph that he could show her how to use something so simple and not two seconds later, she’d forgotten how to use it again. He put the second cup in and closed the lid before he pressed the painfully large start button. One, two, three.