All Our Tomorrows

by Peter Cawdron

  I don’t think anyone’s really afraid of heights, not in the classic sense of fear. It’s a survival instinct. Although I know this sensation is nothing more than self-preservation, I feel as though I could tumble off the roof at any moment. The soles of my feet tingle.

  “How are you doing?” Jane asks.

  “Fine, I guess.”

  It’s a lie. Jane sees straight through those few words. She hugs me, which is nice, but I’d much rather we hugged further up the sloping roof so I barely respond.

  “Have you seen my father?” I ask, wondering if this is a question I really want answered.

  Jane points.

  “He’s over with Marge and Ferguson. They’re trying to figure out how to get us off this damn roof.”

  “What about the barn?”

  “It’s too far away,” Jane says. She leads me up the sloping tiles, around the survivors huddling together against the cold, and over toward my dad. “The barn looks close, but it’s easily fifteen feet away. It might as well be over the next hill.”

  “But if we can get there,” I say.

  “Unless you can sprout wings and fly,” Jane replies, “we’re going to have to come up with some other option.”

  Jane leads me around the side of the roof. The alley between the house and the barn is teeming with zombies. They see us and a sea of arms reaches out of the darkness. A haunting wail resounds through the night, calling for our blood. Snarling and moaning, the zombies track our every step, willing us to slip and fall.

  “Hazel!” Dad cries as we approach. He raises his one good arm and I hug him. He’s warm. He feels hot. He’s sweating. I hope it’s from the exertion of the last few minutes and not an infection, although at this point, it doesn’t really matter.

  Ferguson and Marge are talking.

  “Can we get in contact with the other houses?”

  “No,” Ferguson replies.

  “I don’t like this,” Dad says. “This is all wrong.”

  “What are you thinking, Abraham?” Marge asks. Even under the immense pressure of the moment, Marge has the presence of mind to realize my dad may have a unique insight into what’s happening. When my dad said, “This is all wrong,” my first thought was, “Duh, and what’s right about being attacked by zombies?” but like Marge, I know my dad well enough to keep my mouth shut and listen. If he sees something out of the ordinary, it’s with good reason.

  “They haven’t attacked the other houses. Why?”

  He’s right. We’ve been so focused on surviving for the next few minutes we haven’t noticed the obvious. Zee has crowded around the old homestead, leaving the farmhouse and the dormitory largely alone. There are a few stragglers wandering around those homes, but they’re not being inundated like we are. There’s easily a thousand zombies packed around our house.

  “Like flies on shit,” Ferguson notes. That’s not quite the analogy I would use, but he’s right.

  Gunshots ring out through the night. Those in the other houses are shooting at the zombies. Zee should swarm toward the sound, but he doesn’t, leaving them free to pick off any zombie that strays too close.

  Dozens of dark figures stream away from the dormitory and the other homes, running up the hill away from the commune.

  “They’re evacuating,” Dad says.

  “Good,” Marge replies. And we stand there for a moment watching them flee as our home burns beneath us. Shock does strange things to people. Seeing others herd their families over to the corral, it’s strangely comforting to know they’re going to survive. Somehow, it makes up for our coming loss.

  I know roughly what they’ll do. At the back of the corral there’s a fenced area. It’s an old gravel dump, from the days when we had a government and someone cared about maintaining roads. The chain link fence is in good condition and stands about ten feet high. Technically, it’s not part of this property, but no one cares about stuff like that anymore. They’ll be safe there.

  “What do they want?” Marge asks, snapping me back to the moment. And that’s when it strikes me. Zee wants something.

  I look Marge in the eye and say, “Me!”

  “What?” Dad asks in surprise.

  “Explain,” Marge says, as cold and calculating as ever.

  “Steve,” I begin, struggling to say his name but glad some good can come from his death. “He saw them, back in the camps outside of Chicago. They’re not mindless.”

  “Now wait a minute—” Ferguson says, but Marge holds her hand up, cutting him off.

  “Go on.”

  “Steve told us about how the old ones watched as zombies attacked his camp. We didn’t believe him. But down in the city, I saw one of them for myself.”

  “One of the old zombies?” Marge asks, with a surprising amount of calm considering fire is breaking through one side of the roof. Flames leap into the sky. Our lives are measured in minutes rather than hours, and yet I think this is important for her to understand. Even with the house burning beneath us, I think this information holds the key to our escape.

  I nod, saying, “She watched me. She was in charge. She directed the others.”

  “But they have no reasoning capacity,” my dad says. “They’re driven by instinct. They’re no smarter than ants.”

  “Even ants have a queen,” I say.

  I turn back to Marge, adding, “She stood in front of us. She stood as calmly as you are right now, watching our every move. Steve was there. He saw her too.”

  “And what did you do?” Dad asks.

  My blood runs cold.

  “I put a bullet between her eyes.”

  “You killed their queen,” Ferguson says.

  “Don’t you see,” I say to Dad. “They came for us. For Steve and me.”

  Marge is quiet. Ferguson looks over at the ravenous horde. Dad is lost in thought.

  “There’s only one way to end this,” I say.

  Marge cuts me off, saying, “You can’t give them what they want. We don’t even know if that will work.”

  “We all die anyway,” I say, looking at the flames consuming the building. The roof above the kitchen collapses. Sparks and embers fly into the night. The radiant heat is on the verge of being overwhelming.

  “Hazel, no,” Dad says.

  I kiss him on the cheek and say, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Hazel,” Marge says with the sternness only an ex-school teacher can muster. “I won’t hear any more of this talk of sacrifice. For now, what we need to focus on is getting off this roof. We’ve got to get to that barn.”

  And I think I know how, seeing David wrestling with the solid oak door. He’s turning the door around, getting it in position to nail over the plywood and seal the hole.

  I leave Dad, Marge and Ferguson and jog around the roof, surprising myself with how nimble I can be when I’m not thinking about myself. That’s the key, I think. Focus on yourself and you cannot help but be afraid. Focus on what you can do for others, and the fear fades like the night giving way to dawn.

  “Wait!” I yell above the call of zombies and the crackle of the fire.

  David looks up. He has nails between his lips, held between his teeth.

  “I need that door,” I say.

  “For what?” he asks through gritted teeth.

  “To get to the barn.”

  “But it won’t reach.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” I reply, reaching out and taking the door from him.

  The door is stupidly heavy, and I struggle to hold it against my right side. This isn’t going to work. I’ve got my left hand beneath the leading edge of the door and my right hand up high, trying to balance the weight. I bend my knees slightly, leaning the door against my upper chest, trying to compensate for the shift in my center of gravity.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” David asks.

  “Hazel,” Jane says, coming up beside us. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  “Me?” I reply with
innocence in my voice. I must look idiotic standing there holding a door weighing almost half as much as I do.

  David looks confused. I think he’s surprised I can even take the weight of the door and looks ready to grab it if I slip.

  I look him in the eye and say, “Take good care of her.”

  “Uh,” he begins, but I’m off.

  I drop my shoulder slightly, shifting the weight of the door forward, and start to run. Most people would call my pace a light jog, but for me, while balancing a heavy wooden door, it’s a sprint.

  I run up the incline of the roof and across the ridge. My chest heaves. My heart races. My lungs are burning, but from here, it’s all downhill. I can see Dad standing to one side. The barn looms before me on the far side of the alley. In the darkness, Zee calls for me.

  Jane and David yell, “No!” But I doubt they know what I’m about to do. If they did, they’d think I was crazy, and maybe I am. But Steve’s gone. I’m past caring. Zee is after me, not them. I can’t stand by and not try something to help my friends. Nothing else matters any more.

  I can hear David’s feet pounding on the tiles behind me.

  I run hard, hoping, praying I don’t slip. Tiles disappear beneath my feet, followed by the gutter and suddenly I’m in midair, soaring above hundreds of zombies clamoring for my blood. I shift my weight, pulling the door under me, holding onto it like a surfboard. I was never going to make it across the gap, but I don’t need to. I only need to make it halfway. From there, I either make it to the barn or I’m taken by Zee. Either way, this is the only chance my friends have.

  I hang there in midair for what feels like an eternity but must only be a fraction of a second, and then I plummet, plunging into the horde of zombies.

  The flat door slaps against dozens of outstretched arms. My head collides with the wood and I split my lip.

  “HAZZZZEEEE!” David yells from the roof.

  For a moment, I’m stunned. I lie there on the door as hands grab at me. A mass of zombies beneath me push and pull on the flat wooden door, somehow keeping me afloat on a sea of arms.

  Blood drips from my lip. I’m dazed. My head took a sharp knock and it takes me a second to recover.

  Dark, ragged hands reach for me, clawing at my arms and legs. Zombies fight to pull me under, but they’re fighting each other. The zombies beneath the door push up, while those around the edges pull down and, for lack of a better word, I drift on an ocean of hands.

  Zee howls at the night.

  “Get up!” Dad yells.

  Fingers grab at my ankle. I scramble forward as a zombie rips off my boot. Hands tear at my clothes, ripping my sleeves from my shoulders.

  I’m still four or five feet from the barn, but I’m close. I get to my knees as the door sways beneath me like a boat in a storm, threatening to capsize with the fury of the waves. There’s never going to be a good time. I have to jump.

  I spring out, leaping off the door and aiming for a second floor window. My fingers catch the window ledge.

  Zee grabs at my legs, pulling me down.

  I can feel my fingers slipping.

  My nails drag against the aging paint on the windowsill.

  I lash out with my feet, desperate to shake Zee loose, but he has an iron grip.

  Hands grab at my pants, ripping the fabric. I can’t hold on. I’m going to fall backwards into the swarm of zombies, but they’re fighting with each other. They’re so driven, they claw at each other to reach me and pull the closest zombies away from me.

  “HAZEL!” Jane yells.

  Yelling isn’t helping.

  My other boot is wrenched free, and that gives me an opening. I scramble with my socks, kicking off the wooden boards on the side of the barn and pulling myself up on the windowsill, but there’s no room, there’s nowhere to go. The window’s shut. I’m stuck, pushing against the side of the barn with my toes and performing a chin-up on the window ledge.

  “Duck,” comes the cry from behind me, and I hear David calling out. “Keep your head down.”

  Instinctively, I hunch.

  A roof tile smashes through the window, breaking the glass.

  I pull myself up, but I can’t let go of the ledge. The muscles in my arms are burning. I inch higher, working my way up with my toes. Finally, I collapse rather than climb through the window, breaking the last of the glass.

  Shards of glass stick into my right shoulder, but I’m half inside. I clamber over the window frame, pulling myself over the broken glass. My shirt tears as I roll on the floor in agony.

  “Get some rope,” David calls out.

  I’d like to catch my breath, but I turn and see flames licking at the sky behind him. There’s no time. I can hear zombies crashing around beneath me in the barn, but there’s no stairs. They can’t climb ladders. I hope.

  The barn is dark.

  “Two ropes,” David yells over the zombies screaming in the alleyway. “One high. One low.”

  “Quick!” Jane yells.

  Blood runs from my shoulder. I’m in pain, but there will be time to hurt later. I feel around in the dark and find some thick rope coiled in the corner.

  There’s a side door used for loading boxes into the loft. I slide it open and see dozens of people standing on the roof calling to me as the house burns around them.

  I’m only going to get one shot at this. I tie off one end of the rope using a double clove hitch, wishing I’d paid more attention to the various types of knots in school.

  I grab the coil of rope and stand by the edge of the floor, swinging from the hip and heaving the heavy rope with all of my might.

  David reaches for the rope. He’s leaning out over the alleyway. Jane anchors him, holding one arm and leaning backwards as he stretches out to grab the rope. They’re both in danger of tumbling into the zombie infested alley. The rope sails through the air but it looks as though it’s going to fall short. David pushes out further as Marge and Ferguson grab Jane to stop the two of them from falling. Somehow, David’s fingers get a hold of the rope and in seconds it’s pulled taut.

  One of the marauders rips up a few roof tiles, giving them an anchor point so they can tie the rope around the wooden roof frame. He’s barely got the rope tied off before David is shimmying across, hanging upside down above the raging horde. I need to find more rope, but I’m exhausted.

  I collapse against the railing overlooking the barn floor. I expect to see a mass of zombies below, baying for blood, but the barn is empty. The zombies I heard must have been outside.

  David climbs into the barn and grabs another rope.

  “Nice work,” he says, catching his breath. “Zombie surfing. Even better than zombie bowling.”

  I laugh.

  “Steve would be proud,” he says.

  Yes, he would, I think, although I’m not sure I would have been quite so suicidal if Steve was still alive.

  Another two men shimmy across to help. David ties the second rope above head-height and tosses it across the alley. Once the other men are across, he tightens the original rope, using some kind of pulley to pull it taut.

  Someone over on the roof ties the second rope around the chimney. Survivors begin working their way across the rope bridge. They’re not as quick as the marauders, but they work hand over hand as they walk along the rope.

  Parts of the house collapse. Smoke billows into the darkness. I can feel the heat of the flames on my face.

  My dad crosses, moving slowly with only one arm reaching up for the rope. One of the women leads him on, encouraging him, telling him he can make it. Beneath him, zombies snap and cry out, consumed by rage.

  I’m trying to figure out who the final two people are to leave the burning roof. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is—Marge comes across, and finally, Ferguson. For all our differences, I’m impressed by Ferguson. He wasn’t going to leave anyone behind. And Marge, her heart may be as soft as a marshmallow, but she’s courageous, she’s always thinking about others first. I bet F
erguson had a hard time convincing her to go across before him.

  Jane helps one of the older women tend to my cuts. Daubs of alcohol seethe and bubble in the wound as the woman cleans the cut on my shoulder.

  “I was a nurse, you know.”

  I try to smile at the lady, but it hurts.

  “Olivia,” she says, trying to distract me from the pain.

  “Haze. Hazel.”

  “Abraham’s girl, right?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, realizing she’s one of the new intake, a survivor from the farms to the east.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. You’re going to be okay. We’ll get out of this.”

  Her voice quivers. I’m not sure if she’s trying to convince me or if she’s trying to talk herself into believing we’ll escape. Zombies pound on the wooden walls of the barn below us, shaking the floor.

  A needle is sterilized over a burning candle. The cut in my shoulder needs stitches and I grimace as the needle and thread punch through my skin time and again.

  “That was a brave thing you did,” Olivia says.

  “Only because it worked,” I say, trying to smile. “In any other context, it was stupid.”

  “Brave and stupid,” she concedes as the needle works its way painfully through my arm.

  I can hear boots on the roof of the barn above us. I glance up and Jane says, “Putting out spot fires.”

  I nod.

  The roar of the fire consuming the homestead is astonishingly loud. Embers drift in through the open side door. I’m surprised they haven’t closed the door as the radiant heat is intense, but I can see a couple of the marauders peering out through the opening, directing the efforts to stop the fire from spreading to the barn. They need to be able to see where the embers land.

  People run around with buckets of water sloshing by their sides.

  “Do you know who the boy was?” Olivia asks.

  I’m silent.

  Jane looks at her, and she seems to realize we don’t know.

  “The one they carried off? Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. He was yelling and screaming as they dragged him into the woods. Why would they do that? I thought they just killed you outright?”