Until his dreams got their hands on him.
Then he just wanted to wake up and scream.
He jerked awake at three-nineteen in the morning, fully clothed and needing to pee like a race horse. He’d hoped it would’ve been closer to six or seven so he could put the nightmares behind him for another night but he still had three good hours left to squirm beneath the sandman’s touch. Feeling his way through the dark, Paul slipped into a Jack and Jill bathroom and relieved himself in the bathtub, which, unlike the toilet, was still taking a drain. After that, Paul made sure his gun was loaded and tip-toed downstairs, mouth as dry as a cotton ball. He crept past Dan and Wendy, both curled up asleep on the living room couch, and went into the kitchen. Chugging a bottle of lukewarm water, his gaze hitched on the French doors where a thick fog pressed up against the glass. His Adidas shuffled closer. He set the water on the island without looking, not sure if he was seeing things or if somebody was really standing on the deck. A wave of fog rolled past and the figure vanished from sight.
Paul glanced behind him, and then quietly removed the two long planks running across the patio doors. He held his breath when he unlocked the deadbolt with a soft click. Heart pounding, he pulled the right door back and let in the fog. Paul stepped out into night, drawing his handgun and filling his lungs with a cool breath while the mist coiled around his jeans like ghostly tentacles. He blinked to clear his eyes. A sliver of moonlight broke through a patch in the clouds. The silhouette was standing even closer now, spiking Paul’s adrenaline. He opened his mouth to say something that didn’t matter but couldn’t find his voice. The shadow watched him, bemused by Paul’s incapacitation. A brisk breeze chilled him to the bone, freezing his feet to the deck. The silhouette moved, spurring Paul to take aim. Fog rolled by in a wave, shielding the shadow for a brief moment. Paul spread his legs and pointed the gun with both hands, breathing much too fast to be accurate with his shots. He remembered the camper at the gas station and refused to pull the trigger unless he was absolutely sure his mind wasn’t messing with him again. The pale vapor cleared with a slight breeze and the thing sauntered closer with that all too familiar hobble in its step. Not wanting to attract more flesh-eaters with a gunshot piercing the dead of night, Paul backpedalled into the kitchen and locked the patio doors. Holstering his gun, he pulled a knife from a butcher’s block, the blade long and sharp. Tightly gripping the handle, he envisioned himself stabbing the thing through the skull. He would have to get close but he could do this. They do it in the movies all the time. Granted, this was real life but sometimes less was more. He forced his legs to take a step toward the doors when a teenage boy floated out of the fog and smashed into the glass. Paul tripped and fell to his ass, watching the pimply faced boy in a Slipknot concert-tee languidly claw at the glass door. Another figure dashed through the fog behind the teen and disappeared.
“We’ve got company,” Paul yelled, scrambling to his feet and trading the knife for his Beretta.
The gangly teen licked the glass with a charred tongue, desperate for a taste of Paul’s flesh. He aimed for the kid’s big nose, pushing the teen back into the fog and out of sight. The boy’s sudden reaction triggered a frown to slide down Paul’s face like a slow moving avalanche. The kid seemed to recognize the gun’s repercussions which was impossible. Wasn’t it? Paul inched closer, pointing the weapon at the doors, the swirling vapor playing tricks on him.
“What’s wrong?” Dan asked, stumbling into the dark kitchen with his Glock out.
Paul spoke in a chilled whisper. “There’s at least two out there.”
Dan followed Paul’s intense gaze to the French doors, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he snapped, the camper family slipping through his mind again. He could hear the doubt in Dan’s voice and didn’t blame him but it pissed him off just the same. “Let’s hold on for a second and maybe they’ll go away.”
“Maybe we should put the boards back,” Dan whispered, staring at the two planks lying on the floor.
Paul nodded to the doors. “Lock the deadbolt too,” he whispered.
Dan’s face crumbled. “Me?”
“I’ll cover you.”
“No way, you do it.”
“I already have my gun out.”
Dan raised the gun in his hand. “So do I.”
“What’s going on?” Wendy asked, pink gun clutched in both hands like she was on some primetime cop show.
Paul put a finger to his lips and jerked his chin to the French doors. “Two of them out on the deck.”
“Seriously?”
“There’s nobody out there,” Dan whispered, squinting through the glass.
Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Paul knelt down and grabbed a board, sweat dripping from his brow. “There is.”
Wendy stepped closer. “How can you see anything? It’s so foggy out.”
A nude man flung himself from the fog’s shifting grasp and smashed against the doors, fingernails scratching against the glass. Paul jumped and dropped the board, watching the man bounce back into the curling haze and disappear from view.
“Oh shit!” Dan took aim. “You weren’t kidding.”
The three stood with their guns aimed at the patio doors, the quiet ringing in Paul’s ears. It was the same kind of quiet just before an EF5 rips a small town to pieces. Uneven breaths made his chest hitch and he stiffened when a faint shadow rushed from one side of the deck to the other.
“Did you see that?” he whispered.
Wendy threw her hair over her shoulder. “See what?”
Paul scurried over and replaced the boards. “They’re fucking with us.”
Glass broke somewhere in the basement and Paul spun around on his heels, pointing the flat black Beretta at the door next to the fridge. Dan holstered his handgun and grabbed the state trooper’s shotgun leaning in the corner while Wendy covered the French doors.
Heavy boot steps thundered down the hallway. “What’s the score, boss?” Brock asked gruffly, fastening his gun belt around a pair of boxers. Paul guessed he slept in the hat because there was no way he would’ve wasted the time putting it on when all hell was breaking loose like this.
But he had.
Cora’s satin red robe glimmered when she crossed through a slice of moonlight, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood flooring. Her swollen eyes looked to Paul for clarification as Brock snatched a flashlight from the counter and tossed it to Wendy. He grabbed the other flashlight but didn’t turn it on, keeping it just as ready as the smoke wagon in his right hand.
“At least three of them,” Paul replied, eyes bouncing between the basement door and the deck. “Two out back and someone’s downstairs.”
Brock pushed Cora behind him and took up a defensive stance, white belly hanging over his hand stitched gun belt. “Dan and Wendy take the basement door. Paul and I will cover the deck.” It wasn’t a suggestion and, without another word, they waited in the glowing darkness. The house was dead quiet. Paul’s skin crawled. They shared wide-eyed looks, afraid to breathe.
“Maybe we should go downstairs and check it out,” Dan whispered, pointing the shotgun at the basement door.
Wendy adjusted her grip on Sophia’s gun. “I’ll cover you.”
He frowned. “Damn, why am I always the one that has to go?”
Brock shushed them and tipped his hat back, searching the ceiling for something Paul didn’t see.
Cora, who looked half fucked up from last night and totally scared to death, followed her husband’s roaming gaze. “What is it?”
Brock looked down, face drawn and pale. “They’re on the roof.”
“What?” Dan hissed. “I don’t hear anything.”
“They’re up there.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can they get inside?”
Brock swallowed hard. “We have dormer windows.”
“Oh, great,” Dan whis
pered, grabbing the doorknob to the basement. “Well, someone is definitely downstairs. I’m going down there.”
“I’ll go with you,” Wendy said, falling in line.
The angry teenager smashed into the glass door again and Cora screamed. Brock lit the bastard up with the flashlight, drawing a bead on the worst case of acne Paul had ever seen. Red sores oozed yellow pus down the kid’s peeling face, dripping to the deck in wet globs.
Paul shot a hand out. “Don’t shoot! They’ll get in if the glass breaks.”
Something knocked over and broke downstairs that sounded like a lamp, pulling their attention from the teenager.
Brock swung his gun to the basement door. “They’re already in!”
The flashlight trembled in Wendy’s hand as much as the gun in her other. They waited, the calm before the storm wringing the air from their lungs.
Dan looked back to Wendy and grabbed the basement doorknob again. “Ready?”
She nodded. “Go.”
He was about to pull it open when three walking corpses banged into the French doors like bugs to light. It was the teenager and the naked guy again, now joined by a white-haired black lady still carrying a purse. The trio pounded against the doors and Paul knew the glass wouldn’t hold long. Someone smashed against the basement door and Dan and Wendy fell to their asses. They didn’t hear a single footstep come up those stairs and Paul had time to wonder if the dead were launching a coordinated attack. The basement door burst open with the next crash, sending splinters flying. Dan fired a booming round from his butt, catapulting a fireman to the bottom of the carpeted steps in a heap. The man didn’t get back up but two of his firefighter buddies stumbled over his lifeless body like he meant nothing to them and took their rightful place in the dinner line, hats and all. Wendy fired wild shots, the nine-millimeter jumping in her hands. The firemen absorbed the hits and kept climbing while two redheaded tweens brought up the rear with matching freckles and scratches on their faces.
Paul couldn’t tell if they were freckles or blood spots. He turned back to the patio doors trembling beneath each bruising wallop from the corpses outside. “Jesus Christ, we’re surrounded!”
“Steady now!” Brock yelled, keeping his gun trained on the glass doors. “Hold that basement, Dan!”
Dan unloaded vociferous blasts down the stairwell, building a pile of firefighters at the bottom. The twin sisters cleared the bodies and kept climbing with what looked like grins cutting into their pasty cheeks. Dan pumped the shotgun and fired a dry click at their faces. “I’m out!” he hollered over Wendy’s gunshots, throwing the Browning down the stairs at a decomposing hippy in a tie-dyed t-shirt pushing past the sisters. Brock stepped around Cora and blasted the man back to hippy-hell, sending his blond dreadlocks spiraling through the air as he joined the others at the bottom of the staircase. The lifeless mound of rotten flesh grew, barely slowing the festering slugs coming out of the woodwork somewhere below. Cora screamed when the French doors shattered into the kitchen, spraying her bare feet with glass. The teenager wrestled with the top board running across the doors and Paul put a bullet through his nose, dropping the kid flat on his back and shaking the top board loose in the process. The elderly woman tripped over the lower board and fell into the kitchen. Brock blew her head off before putting a hole through the chest of the naked man removing the last board. A dark skinned man with red eyes stumbled out of the fog and into the kitchen like he lived there, reaching for Paul with a hunger to his moan. Paul shot him in the shoulder, knocking him back a step, and then put a round through his face. The man dropped to his knees, revealing four more dead people standing behind him on the deck.
“Fuckin-A,” Paul cried, emptying his clip into the ragtag group.
Wendy emptied her clip into the fiends ascending the stairs. “There’s too many of them!”
Dan unloaded his sidearm while Wendy and Brock reloaded.
Cora stood in the middle of the room pulling at her hair, terror twisting her pretty face into something unrecognizable. “Let’s get to the cars!”
“Paul,” Brock bellowed, snapping the chamber shut on his .357. “We can’t hold em off much longer! Head out the back!”
“They’re all over the deck!” Paul yelled over the gunfire, fishing a new clip from the pouch in his drop-leg holster.
“We’ve gotta try!” Brock shot the naked guy again and grabbed Cora’s hand. “Come on, Dan,” he yelled, towing Cora to the French doors.
“You guys go! I’ll hold em off for a minute!” Dan popped two more zombies in the head and sent them tumbling down the staircase. He ejected the clip and slapped in another.
“We all leave now!” Paul stepped through the broken French doors, his gun going first.
Brock, Cora and Wendy followed him into the fogbank, where there was no telling who was human and who was not.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Glass crunched beneath Paul’s shoes. He readied himself for someone to come lunging out of the fog at any second. Handgun blasts rang out from inside the house, the smell of gunpowder and decay hanging in the air. Cora cursed as she stepped on a piece of broken glass in her bare feet. Paul jerked his gun to a shadow but the fog rolled past and no one was there.
“I hope you’ve got yer keys cuz I ain’t got mine,” Brock whispered, barely visible through the haze.
“I got em.”
Cora gripped the back of her husband’s gun belt, inching forward and seeing things that weren’t there. “Maybe you killed them all.”
“I hope so,” Wendy replied, swinging her gun around.
Carefully stepping over a dead woman, Paul saw her seize his ankle and bite into his calf but it was only his imagination slowing him down. He released a pent-up breath when he found the stairs to the backyard. Brock ran into him from behind, nearly pushing him down the steps. The shooting stopped inside the house and Paul took advantage of the calm to listen for movement. “I can’t see shit,” he said, feeling Brock’s warm breath on the back of his neck.
“Bad time for a fog out,” Brock murmured with Cora glued to his backside. “Let’s just stay calm and get to the car.”
“Good idea,” Wendy said, her head on a greased up swivel.
One at a time, they filed down the staircase and felt their way into the long driveway where the fog wasn’t quite as thick. Shelly1’s taillights appeared between the Suburban and Cora’s red Mercedes. A claustrophobic silence enveloped them as they crept closer to the Chevelle. Paul looked over his shoulder for Dan, but couldn’t see more than ten or fifteen feet behind him. Dan should be here by now. The shooting had stopped and Paul wanted to call out to him but he turned back around instead, the fog abating just enough to expose three spooks standing on the other side of the cars. Paul and Brock stood shoulder-to-shoulder and unleashed a flurry of bullets, making it unclear who shot who while Cora plugged her ears.
“We’re clear!” Paul said, glancing behind him. “Dan! Let’s go!”
Something screamed and three handgun reports rang out from inside the house.
“I’m right behind you!” Dan yelled back, firing off another three round burst. “Get the goddamn car started!”
“Now, Dan!” Paul dodged two corpses that popped out from the other side of Brock’s white Suburban. One grabbed Wendy by the hair, yanking her head back. She screamed as the thing pressed its teeth against her forearm. Paul shot the stiff at close range, spraying Wendy with blood, and then he shot its friend, spending only two rounds in the process. Bullet economy was essential these days.
“Are you bit?” he yelled.
Wendy looked up from her arm, eyes wide and untamed. “No.”
“They’re everywhere!” Cora howled, one hand holding onto Brock, the other pulling at her hair.
Paul stopped at Shelly1 and Cora wasn’t kidding. The undead were everywhere. Limping. Moaning. Reaching.
It was time to go.
A fat man in Carhartt bibs charged from the shadows, running
at Paul with determined steps. Paul took a steadying breath as the thing sprinted closer. He knew he’d only get one clear shot before the man smashed him against the car and bit down. Paul squeezed the trigger and the man’s head snapped back. He fell to the concrete and Paul took out two more fiends behind him with Brock and Wendy shooting their guns in the background. Thanks to the whirling vapor, it was hard to see the living dead until the last few seconds and the idea that they were using the fog for cover slipped through Paul’s mind. He dropped two more ghouls. Then three. Crumpled bodies littered the driveway along with dozens of spent shell casings shimmering in the moonlight. It smelled like rotten eggs and burnt gunpowder.
Footsteps raced up the driveway behind Paul and relief shot through him. He turned to Dan, face slumping when he saw the heavyset woman with short gray hair charging at breakneck speed. Paul shot her in the face, stepping to the side as she bounced off the car and crumbled to the ground. He fired at a skinny man shuffling from the barn but the gun clicked dry. “Shit,” he cried, hopping inside the Chevelle and firing it up.
Wendy whittled away at an unyielding pack of stiffs creeping out from behind the trees in the front yard while Brock reloaded.
“Get in the car!” Paul cried, slapping in his last clip.
Brock swung the chamber shut and yelled at Cora to get in the backseat but she stood frozen with fear, watching the things close in around them. Brock took out a young boy and then a man in cowboy boots. “Get in the fucking car, Cora!” he screamed, firing the behemoth weapon like it was a toy gun in his big hand.
Cora held tight to his belt. He tried shaking her off while taking aim at the horde stumbling closer. Wendy grabbed Cora and shoved her into the smooth backseat, sliding in behind her and slamming the door shut and locking it.
A Little More Dead Page 20