One Hour to Live

by Gary M. Chesla

  “OK,” Kevin replied.

  “We’ll go with you,” Bob said. “I’ll get my shotgun in case we run into any more of them things out there. It’s been quiet out there since this morning, but who knows when those bastards are going to show up out of nowhere again.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate your help,” Lisa said.

  Bob put on his hunting vest where he kept the remaining twenty shotgun shells he owned.

  He had been meaning to buy a few more boxes of shells for his gun, but when all the animals seemed to have disappeared, he figured there wasn’t any rush.

  Until they started seeing more animals, he didn’t have anything to shoot at.

  This would teach him to let his guard down. He never let his ammo supply get this low before.

  After locking his door, they all piled into Kevin’s Subaru.

  Kevin drove and Lisa sat with him up front.

  Bill and Bob rode in the back.

  Bob had his window down and held the barrel of the shotgun out the window.

  The streets all looked like Bob’s back porch.

  Most houses were not as well built as Bob’s and had suffered major damage.

  Of course, most were vacant and stood open or offered little resistance to the mass of bodies that had pushed against them.

  But even the houses, the few that were still occupied didn’t appear to have fared much better.

  Unfortunately, by what they were seeing, Kevin was afraid of what they might find when they arrived at the Murphy’s.

  Lisa had also come to the same conclusion.

  She sat in her seat, her hands tightly griping the arm rest on her door, as her entire body trembled.

  When Kevin pulled into the Murphy’s driveway and parked behind their old Ford, he put his hand on Lisa’s arm.

  “Wait here,” Kevin said softly, “let me go in and check out the house first.”

  “I’ll go with you Kevin,” Bob said. “Bill, you stay here with Lisa and come get us if you see anything moving around out here.”

  Lisa looked at Kevin. She had tears in her eyes.

  She had seen what happened to people that those damn zombies got their hands on.

  It all had seemed like a horror movie before, but sitting here seeing her house battered and bloody, drove home the cruel reality that she had managed to ignore until now.

  Lisa nodded as she continued to hang on to the arm rest.

  Bob was waiting for Kevin, when he finally got out of the car.

  They quietly moved up the driveway.

  “Their car is here,” Kevin whispered, “It means they were probably home when the zombies came.”

  Bob nodded as he and Kevin studied the house.

  The side of the house was streaked with blood.

  The windows that were at ground level had been smashed.

  The swing, where Lisa’s unhappy father sat when Kevin arrived yesterday to pick up Lisa to go to the carnival, now hung by only one chain.

  The other arm where the second chain was attached, had been ripped off the swing and now hung in midair.

  Bob looked at where the door entering the house had been.

  “I’ll go in first with the shotgun,” he whispered.

  Kevin nodded.

  Bob walked through the doorway first.

  Most of the houses in Bolivar had the same company store house layout.

  The back door led into the kitchen, the same as at Bob’s house.

  Bob and Kevin nodded at each other as they walked through the kitchen.

  It had been trashed and blood smeared, but other than that, it hadn’t looked like anything drastic had happened here.

  They moved past the stairwell.

  Unlike his stairwell, the Murphy’s didn’t have a door at the bottom of theirs. Bob glanced up the stairs, then moved on.

  As they left the kitchen, a small hallway went to the left.

  They glanced into the small bathroom built under the stairs that led upstairs.

  The bathroom showed a few signs that at least one zombie had been in there, for what reason only it knew, but other than a few bloody towels lying on the floor, and the streaks on the walls and sink, not much had happened in there either.

  Kevin followed his dad past the bathroom and to the end of the small hallway.

  So far, so good.

  At the end of the hallway should be the living room.

  The houses weren’t very large. The main level consisted of a large kitchen, a hallway, a small bathroom and the other half of the main level would be a living room.

  The upstairs usually had two bedrooms, or three smaller bedrooms and a bathroom.

  From the stairway, the upstairs looked clean and undisturbed.

  “I hope the living room is clear,” Kevin thought as they neared the end of the hallway. “It could mean Lisa’s parents are still safe somewhere.”

  Bob moved to the living room doorway.

  He looked in to the living room.

  Kevin saw his dad slowly lower the shotgun.

  Bob turned and looked at Kevin.

  “I think they must have been in the living room when the zombies broke in,” Bob said.

  Kevin slid up next to his dad and looked in the room.

  There weren’t any bodies in the room, but that didn’t mean that Lisa’s parents hadn’t died here.

  The couch was completely soaked with blood. Maybe one of her parents had been taking a nap.

  The wall above the couch had blood sprayed from the top of the couch to the ceiling.

  Lisa’s other parent must have been sitting on the big stuffed chair reading the paper.

  A bloody newspaper was crumbled up on the floor in front of the chair. Bloody foot prints were all over it.

  It was torn and looked like it had been dragged a few feet on the floor in front of the chair.

  The chair was also soaked in a lot of blood, like someone had bleed out while on the chair.

  Sprays of blood also covered the wall behind the chair.

  Kevin looked at Bob, “Lisa is going to be crushed.”

  “Sorry Kevin,” Bob said.

  “Fucking zombies,” Kevin swore.

  “Let’s check upstairs just to be sure before we go.”

  “OK,” Kevin replied, “I should go and get some clothes for Lisa while we are here. I don’t think she should see this for a few days.”

  Bob nodded and started back towards the kitchen.

  The upstairs as it had appeared from the bottom of the stairs, had been untouched.

  It was unfortunate that the Murphy’s hadn’t turned in early last night, they might still be alive.

  As Kevin thought things over, he hoped they didn’t die because they were waiting up for him to bring Lisa home from the carnival.

  But Kevin knew he shouldn’t beat himself up for not getting Lisa home last night.

  As it was, he and Lisa had barely escaped this same fate themselves.

  Kevin walked into Lisa’s bedroom and picked up a shopping bag and began to fill it with clothes for Lisa.

  He knew exactly which room was hers.

  He had been here one time before.

  The sight of the room triggered some old memories.

  The summer before he left for school had left him with enough memories to write a book.

  He had come over one evening to pick up Lisa to go to the movies.

  When he knocked on the door, he noticed the door was open a few inches.

  Lisa’s called out that the door was open and told him it was safe to come in because her parents were out for a few hours.

  Kevin called back that he would wait for Lisa on the porch.

  If her dad found him in the house alone with Lisa, he could only imagine how her dad would react.

  Mr. Murphy didn’t try to hide the fact he was not happy with how much he and Lisa had been seeing each other.

  The next thing Kevin knew, the door opened wide.

  Lisa stood at the
open door, completely naked, grinning at him.

  She had that ornery look on her face, the look that told Kevin he was going to have his hands full, again.

  He had learned to love that look, but this time he thought he was going to die.

  The first thing he did was to turn and look to make sure Mr. Murphy wasn’t standing right behind him.

  Lisa grinned, “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” Then her grin even grew wider as she said, “Or if you prefer, I can come out and sit with you on the swing. Of course, you’ll have to keep me warm.”

  Kevin had learned early that summer, not to try and call Lisa’s bluff, because she didn’t bluff about these things.

  Everyone else thought Lisa was shy and reserved, but Kevin had never seen that side of her.

  He didn’t have time to write his last will and testament, so Kevin quickly made the sign of the cross and rushed inside.

  That evening as she watched her parents drive away, Lisa got another one of her wild ideas.

  That night she wanted to see what it would be like to do it in her own bed with her parents just down the road.

  Kevin almost broke his leg when he had to jump out her second story window when her parents came home with he and Lisa in bed.

  Then he had to run around and knock on the door and pretend he just got there to pick up Lisa.

  He had to think fast when he noticed that Mr. Murphy’s car was parked behind his car in the driveway.

  He obviously couldn’t say that he just arrived.

  He quickly made up a story about having to run down the road to retrieve the hubcap that rolled off his car when he hit a pothole as he drove over to get Lisa.

  It also helped explain why he was so sweaty and out of breath.

  Kevin turned three shades of red when he heard Lisa’s mother scolding her for not taking a shower before going out to the movies because she was all sweaty.

  Lisa said she had been cleaning her hot room and that it was just Kevin and they were only going to see a movie.

  Kevin was on pins and needles until they were away from the house.

  He avoided Mr. Murphy over the next few days, afraid that Mr. Murphy had noticed that Kevin’s car didn’t have any hubcaps.

  The experience had made Lisa so excited, she insisted that instead of a movie, that they go back to the Pink Flamingo.

  Luckily, Mike was working there again that evening.

  Kevin was going to threaten Lisa to never do that again at the house, but decided against it. Trying to threaten her would only make her just that much more determined to do it again.

  Besides he knew there wasn’t anything that he could threaten her with.

  At least there wasn’t anything that he would have the will power to actually go through with.

  Besides as he looked back on it now, it had ended up being one of the wildest nights he and Lisa had that summer.

  Not the wildest by a long shot, but it ranked right up there in their top twenty list of crazy things they had done that summer.

  When Kevin had the shopping bag full of underwear, he decided to take half of them back out of the bag and tossed them on the bed to save space. From what he remembered, she didn’t wear underwear very often anyhow, at least she didn’t when she was with him. And when she didn’t, she always made sure he knew about it.

  Kevin then added some shirts and jean shorts, shoes and a jacket. When he was done, he looked at his dad.

  “I think this will hold her for a few days.”

  They quietly walked down the stairs and made their way back outside.

  Kevin dreaded getting back in the car and telling Lisa what he had seen.

  When they got in the car, Kevin handed Lisa the bag of clothes.

  “Here I got you some things to hold you for a few days.”

  Lisa took the bag but looked at Kevin expectantly.

  “We didn’t find your parents in the house,” Kevin said. But before she would get too hopeful, he added, “But I think they had been there when the zombies came. I’m sorry Lisa, but I don’t think they made it. I could be wrong, but it didn’t look good.”

  Tears started running down Lisa’s cheeks, “Maybe I should go and look?”

  “No Lisa,” Kevin said, “Don’t go in there. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. If we don’t see them in a few days, I’ll take you in for a look after you’ve had a few days to accept it. But I don’t want you to see what I saw in there.”

  Lisa stared at Kevin for a minute as the tears began to escape down her face.

  She finally grabbed Kevin and crushed her face against his chest and began to sob.

  Kevin held her for ten minutes before she stopped crying.

  Bob and Bill sat silently in the back of the car.

  Lisa finally looked up at Kevin.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’m OK now.”

  “No, you’re not and I don’t expect you to be,” Kevin replied. “But we’ll get through this together.”

  Lisa sat back in her seat and let her head fall back against the head rest as she stared out through the windshield.”

  Kevin, why don’t we take a quick spin through Bolivar while it’s still quiet and see if anyone else is still here?” Bob said.

  They drove the streets of Bolivar for fifteen minutes, more than enough time to see the entire town.

  The streets changed, but not the scenery.

  They couldn’t find another living soul in town.

  They drove back to Bob’s house.

  Kevin locked his car and they went in the house.

  “Bill I’ll find you a blanket,” Bob said. “You should stay here tonight. You can sleep on the couch. Tomorrow we’ll get your house secured. But you can stay here as long as you want. If nothing else, we can use your place as a backup in case something happens here.

  Bob turned to Kevin, “Take Lisa and her things up to your room. She can stay in your room with you if that is OK with the two of you.”

  Kevin nodded.

  “That’s fine.”

  Tomorrow we can sit down and figure out what we are going to do next, but I think for tonight we all need to rest and think.”

  That night, Lisa slept tightly wrapped around Kevin.

  Tonight, Kevin held her tight, his only thoughts were about how to ease her pain and to keep her safe.

  Tonight, he didn’t feel like he normally felt when she wrapped herself around him.

  Tonight, he worried about the frightened little girl that laid against him, trembling.

  Tonight, she just needed him to be there.

  The dead had arrived and spread death and destruction to everything they touched.

  It had been horrifying.

  But this hurt more than anything else he had seen the last two days.

  This was the first blow that had hit him close to his heart.

  But it wouldn’t be the last or the worst.

  Chapter 15

  September, One year ago

  Kevin woke when the sun light began to directly shine into his room.

  He opened his eyes and slowly looked around the room.

  He didn’t want to move and wake Lisa. It would be better for her to sleep as long as she could.

  But when he finally looked down, in the middle of a wild tangle of long red hair, two blue eyes were staring up at him.

  Lisa smiled, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Kevin replied sounding concerned, “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Lisa replied as she readjusted her head against Kevin’s chest.

  “Are you sure?” Kevin asked.

  “I think so,” Lisa replied. “I’m sorry I got so upset yesterday.”

  “I think you had a good reason,” Kevin replied. “I don’t want to even think how I would have reacted if I had been you.”

  “I guess everything we’ve seen the last two days finally just made me snap,” Lisa said. “Everything has just been so gory and terrifyi
ng.”

  “Yeah, but to know something like that happened to your parents,” Kevin stopped. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, it’s OK,” Lisa said. “The way Bolivar looked when we drove into town yesterday, I guess I was expecting what we found.”

  “Still,” Kevin started to say.

  “Being away for two years and not seeing my mom for all that time helps dull the pain a little,” Lisa continued. “And you know that my dad and I didn’t get along all that well. I would never have wanted for something like this to happen to him, but we haven’t been close for years. In fact, I lied to you about why I had to get a job.”

  “You did?” Kevin asked.

  “Yeah, I was too embarrassed to tell you the real reason before,” Lisa whispered.

  “You don’t have to tell me now if you don’t want to,”

  Kevin said.

  “No, after losing the last two years we could have had together, thanks to my dad, I don’t want to keep anything from you ever again,” Lisa smiled.

  Kevin detected a hint of sadness in her eyes.

  “I honestly don’t think you ever kept a thing from me,” Kevin smiled. “In fact, there were many times you told me more than I really needed to hear.”

  “Well this might be another one of those times, but I’m going to tell you anyhow,” Lisa smiled but then turned serious. “I had to get a job because my dad stopped paying for my tuition and school expenses.”

  “Why would he do something like that?” Kevin asked.

  “Well, you know how you have so enthusiastically noticed how I’ve changed a little since you last saw me,” Lisa grinned.