by Joseph Zuko
“Jim?” Sara calls to me. I look up. At the doorway to the back of my place stands an infected. It comes right on in. Its flesh stripped arms reach out for me. It is an old man in a tracksuit, with big bushy eyebrows. It has a bad tattoo of an anchor on its forearm. He must have been in the Navy. I jump to my feet and grab him. My blood boils. I lift the infected body up into the air and sweep out its legs. We crash to the floor. Its teeth snap inches from my face. I sit up and straddle it. With every fiber of muscle I have left I eviscerate its face with my elbows. I use the shin guards on my forearms to absolutely destroy it. I hear myself screaming but I can’t stop. Between blows I catch glimpses of the photos that hang on the walls of this shitty apartment. My family. My little girls. My wedding day. Frank pulls me off the dead body. I kick at it as I get to my feet.
“CALM DOWN!” It is his turn to talk me down off the ledge. He turns me away from the dead thing on the floor. “That won’t bring them back.” Its head is a two-foot smear on the floor. Some of its blood has splattered onto an Ernie doll that was left on the floor. I got it for Valerie on her first birthday. She loves that doll and has slept with it more than any other toy.
“We can’t stay here,” Sara helps Devon back to his feet.
“Where can we go?” Frank lets me go.
“I don’t know! My only goal was to get here!” snot runs down my nose and falls off my upper lip. I can’t take my eyes off the bloody Ernie. I have got to clean him. Valerie would cry if she saw him like this. I can’t function. I have lost myself.
“Go! Go without me! I quit,” I zone out and stare at the floor. I can’t look anywhere without seeing something that will make me lose it.
“You don’t get to quit!” Sara pulls my backpack around so I have to face her. “Maybe they left,” she steadies Devon.
“How? The car’s still out there!” I can’t look her in the eyes.
“We need to go!” Frank grabs my spear and hands it to me.
“I’m not leaving! I can’t leave without my family!” I pull my prized high definition plasma TV down off of its stand. It is pulverized when it hits the floor. Frank slaps me across the face. My Krav skills have failed me again. He didn’t do it fast, but I couldn’t stop him.
“My family is gone! I am still standing! You will stand too. You don’t have a choice,” Frank’s eyes breathe fire at me.
“My family is dead too!” Sara looks at me like I am a selfish child.
“Hey!” There is a voice from outside. Frank pulls out his revolver and quickly reloads it. I step closer to the door and out onto the little chunk of concrete we call the backyard.
“Hello?” I call out.
“Up here,” the voice comes from above me. I look up. It is the family that lives kitty corner from us.
“Climb up,” the guy says. I wish I could remember his name. I know he has told me it like three times.
“What?” I step a little further onto the grass. He rolls down an emergency rope ladder. It drops down and the bottom rung touches the freshly clipped lawn.
“Come on!”
“Have you seen my family?” I beg. Please, please, please, a glimmer of hope ignites.
“Yeah. They left with a guy in a red truck. About an hour ago.” My brother-in-law, Troy, drives a red truck. The flame of hope flickers brighter.
“Did he have a beard?”
“Yeah. Now, come on.”
My eyes clear up. My heart lifts. Maybe they are not dead. I have got to regroup and regain focus.
“I have to grab some stuff.” I step back into my place.
“You’d better hurry. They’re coming!” he yells after me.
“He’s got a ladder up to his place,” I head straight for the Ernie doll. I grab it and look around for the Bert I got Robin on her first birthday.
“Can we trust them?” Sara moves Devon towards the door.
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t really know him, but he’s got a family and he always seemed nice,” I dig through a pile of toys.
“My names Cliff, again,” Cliff calls down to us.
“What about Devon?” Frank puts his revolver away.
I find the other doll and pick it up. I let myself hold them tight for a second. “We’ll lift him. Please put this in my bag.” I hand the toys to Frank and turn my back to him. He unzips it and forces them in. There is not much room left. I step into my bathroom and open the cabinet under the sink. There is one of those ten-dollar medical kits and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I take both. In the hallway closet is another backpack I have had since college. I throw the medical stuff in it. I run back to my bedroom and find my Maglite, and a change of underwear and socks. In the junk room on the bookshelf I grab a book my Mom got me when I joined the Boy Scout’s. The book is a field guild to survive outdoors. I cram it into the bag. I look at the dead body on the floor of the room and I notice it was killed with a knife. It sticks out of the side of its skull. I recognize the handle. It is a knife Karen got from her Dad when she was a kid. I pull it out of the dead man’s head and wipe the blood off the blade. I put it in my pocket. The last thing I grab is my Dad’s old leather jacket. It is a heavy-duty jacket that he wore when he was a young man and rode motorcycles. It has sentimental value. Plus it looks badass. The bag is almost full. Back in the kitchen I pull cans of food down out of the cupboards and fill the bag the rest of the way. On the counter I see a note. It is my wife’s handwriting. “WENT TO MOM’S” is all it says. Her brother took her home to her Mom’s house. He is a big strong guy and my mother-in-law has a tall fence around her house. If they made it, they could be safe. My mother-in-law, Penny, stockpiles food. She is a food hoarder. It is a good place to hold up. I have to make it there.
I get outside and Sara is already up the ladder. Frank goes next. I toss the backpack up onto the porch and hand up my spear. Cliff already has Devon’s spear. Frank gets to the top and they pull him over the rail.
“Alright, you hold the ladder. When I get to the top I’ll pull you up. Okay.”
Devon’s skin is pale and he has dark circles under his eyes. Somehow we have to get him some blood and medication to stop any infection. I start to climb. It is not that high, so I get to the top fast. The group helps me over the rail. I look back and Devon is barely holding on to the ladder. From around the corner of the apartment the old person horde has found us.
“Devon! DEVON!” I call down to him. Finally he looks up. “Step onto the ladder and hold tight.”
He tries to put his hurt leg up on to the first rung and screams out in pain. The noise excites the infected.
“Devon! Come on!” Sara begs. He fights to pull himself up fully onto the ladder. The infected are ten feet from him.
“Pull yourself up boy!” Frank slaps at the rail. He tries again and screams at the top of his lungs but he gets both feet up onto the ladder. The monsters are so close. Frank grabs one rope and I take the other. We pull at the same time. When we get a rung up and over the rail I pin it down with my body. The infected reach out. Their fingers brush Devon’s legs. He panics and spins around on the ladder. I am about to lose my grip. If they get a hold of the ladder they will pull him right down.
“Pull me up! Pull me up!” Devon cries out. Sara joins us and helps pull on one of the rungs. We get him above their reach. One more rung and I grasp his hands. The three of us pull him over the rail. We all fall to the floor of Cliff’s porch. We can’t help ourselves, we cry. The four of us lay out on that concrete porch.
“You’ve been shot,” Cliff opens his sliding glass door. “Tina, someone has been shot,” Cliff steps into his apartment. We get out from under Devon and I notice six eyes on us. It is Cliff’s little girls. Tina enters the living room.
“Girls! Get away from the door,” she has only a touch of an accent. She is originally from Mexico. The girls take off and run back to their bedroom.
Cliff has a yoga mat out and on the floor, “Here, lay him on this.”
We drag Devon in and lay
him down onto the mat. Tina goes to Devon’s side and opens his eyes. She looks at his pupils and then holds two fingers to his neck. After a few seconds of counting, she pulls back our bandage job and takes a look at his wounds. Sara kneels down on Devon’s other side.
“Do you know what to do?” Sara takes Devon’s hand.
“I am working on my second year of nursing school. I know enough to be dangerous,” she winks at Devon.
“What a crazy day. It got biblical out there. You want a beer? Hi, I am Cliff and this is Tina.” Cliff holds out his hand for Frank.
“Frank,” he shakes Cliff’s hand, “This is Sara and Devon,” he points at them, “Yes, on the beer, please,” Frank lets go of his hand and finds a place to put his bag down. He goes to work right away at reloading his guns.
Cliff heads into the kitchen. My eyes follow him and there are four cases of beer in there.
“You made it to the store?” I ask.
“We were at the store when shit started going down.”
“When Karen, my wife, left was…”
He cuts me off. “Yeah, they are all fine. Kids, wife, they looked good. Some guy showed up in a truck with a shotgun. He took out some of the…what did you call them, honey?”
“Zombies,” Tina says without looking up from Devon’s leg. Cliff is back from the kitchen.
“Zombies, that’s right. Yeah, he gunned down a bunch and they took off,” Cliff checks out my wounds and bandages, “You look like you have been through hell,” he has three beers in his hand. I don’t recognize the brand. Some kind of Mexican beer. He hands one to both of us.
“Yeah. It has been a day,” I pop open the beer and drain it in one long swallow. Best beer I have ever had.
The End…or is it?
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17