“Sure, grandpa,” she replies and goes into the front room.
“I didn’t intend to be such a pain,” April confides in the old man once the child has left the room.
Jacob takes a seat at the far end of the table. “This old thing?” he rubs his knee, “not at all.” He shakes his head at the suggestion. “It gives me trouble from time to time, but it’s nothing a little rest can’t take care of.”
“But it wouldn’t be hurting you if I hadn’t come along.”
“It would hurt me, regardless,” he says with a deep, throaty laugh and shakes his head, dismissing the thought. “I’m not as young as I used to be. If anyone is to blame, it would be Time for not slowing down for an old man.”
April flashes a smile. “Either way, I’m sure I didn’t make things better.”
“We’re glad to have you. It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen another person with a pulse that...” He pauses in thought. “It’s a blessing to have you here,” he says and clears his throat. “Now let’s have some soup. Hope you don’t mind vegetables, meat is hard to come by now days.”
April laughs, “Sounds perfect.”
“Here, Grandpa.” Emma hands him a rustic cane, carved and polished with age.
“Thank you, dear,” he replies and begins to stand, “much better.” With a large, wooden ladle, Jacob scoops the soup into deep bowls, adorning the top of each serving with a few sprigs of chives. He hands a bowl to Emma. “Take this to April, please.”
The child holds the bowl carefully, watching it as she walks toward the table before placing it in front of April.
“I’ll get you a spoon,” Emma says.
“Thank you, Emma.”
Clanking spoons fill the room, tousled back and forth against enameled bowls. Emma slurps at the soup, looking up at her Grandfather every few moments to make sure she’s not disturbing him, and continues to rustle out a few vegetables from the broth, greedily devouring them.
“The soup is wonderful,” April proclaims.
“Thank you. I grow everything in my garden. The water is a little harder to come by. I have to distill sea water to get the salt out, it’s a constant battle between keeping the boiler full and storing what we don’t use.” He takes a deep breath. “Life has become so much more complicated since they showed up. Emma and I are lucky to have made it through.” He looks back at April after glancing out through the bars that block the windows. “But I’m sure you’ve seen your share too.”
“Yes I have.” April pauses, stares at her soup, and watches the vapors of steam rise up and disappear. She places her forearms on the table in thought. “It’s been difficult for everyone.”
“Emma,” he places his spoon in the bowl and asks, “why don’t you go up to your room and play for a while? I’ll clear the table.”
The child’s face brightens. “Thank you, Grandpa.” In a flash, she scurries out of the room and disappears up the stairs.
Jacob begins to clear the table and places the dishes in the sink. “So what’s your story?”
“I... I don’t know where to begin,” she admits.
“People just don’t pop up on the beach. So what happened?”
April cradles her head, bows into her hands and rests her arms on the table. “My boyfriend died this morning. We were trying to escape a building downtown and he didn’t make it.”
“And you feel guilty for surviving.”
“He told me to run,” her voice quivers. “He died so I could live.”
Jacob scrubs the plates and rinses them with a small bucket of water. “Is there anything you could have done?”
“I could have fought. I could have tried to help him,” she weeps, “but instead, I ran.”
“If you had tried to save him, would you be sitting here right now?”
“Probably not,” she says and shakes her head.
“Well then, it seems to me that you made the only decision you could.” He peers over his shoulder. “At least your boyfriend died for a cause. There are so many others that have died for nothing. His sacrifice seems honorable to me.”
April wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse. “I suppose there isn’t anyone who hasn’t dealt with tragedy.” She turns her chair to face Jacob. “But you still don’t want to surrender. I think that’s why we fight so hard to stay alive, we refuse to fail. To die at the hands of those… things out there; that seems like the ultimate failure. I just don’t want to think of Johnny as having failed. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much.”
“It hurts because you’ve lost someone you loved.” Jacob leans against the counter. “No matter what the circumstance, there is pain when someone passes. Now you have to learn how to deal with it. Either you remember them as the person who lost their life at the hands of the dead, or you remember them as the person who died trying to ensure that you survived,” he says, raising his eyebrows and gives her a smile. “But you have to keep fighting, no matter what. You have to fight to ensure that humanity isn’t forgotten. You have to fight to ensure that your boyfriend didn’t die in vain.”
“I wish I could have done something.”
“You always will,” he says as he dries the dishes with a bar rag. “But the trick is learning to live through it.”
“Jacob?” April peers out the window again. “I know I’m changing the subject, but how do you keep the dead away? I didn’t see much when you brought me here?”
“I’ve lived in this house for nearly fifty years now. Once the tourists came, I had a wall built around the property, mainly for privacy, but it blurred out the scenery,” he laughs. “Why do you ask?”
“Because there seems to be one of them in the back yard right now,” April motions over his shoulder.
Jacob’s face turns from a smile to a look of fear as he follows April’s stare. A corpse shambles slowly pass the window, head bowed as if it were watching its step. A deafening thud slams against the back door, followed by another and another until the sound fills the house, reverberating against the walls and the barred windows.
“Christ!” Jacob exclaims, his face a smear of shock as he glares out through the glass. “She didn’t lock the gate!”
“What do we do?!” April panics.
“Damn me! I always check to make sure she latches it properly.” He hobbles to the living room and April follows closely behind. “Emma! Get down here!” he yells after he pokes his head through the blinds. “We’ve got to go.”
“What is it, Grandpa?” Emma asks from the stairs.
“You didn’t lock the gate. We have to go. Now!”
“What do we do?” April’s voice is dry like she is about to cough out her next breath.
“But, Grandpa, I did lock the gate, I promise, I did,” the child urges.
With a crash, shards of glass rain in through the kitchen window and scatter along the floor like tiny, worthless diamonds. A pale hand reaches in through the barred windows, grasping air in a vain effort to get at the living inside. Emma shrieks as her grandfather turns, drawn to the noise.
“Upstairs!” Jacob yells as another crash splinters a window in the living room. He grabs his pistol from the side table along the couch and stuffs it in the holster beneath his jacket.
A series of crashes issue throughout the house as Jacob leads the way to the second story of the house. From a string hanging in the center of the upstairs hallway, he pulls down the trap door to the attic.
April looks at him questioningly. “But we’ll be trapped,” she says, glancing down the stairs and back up toward the attic hatch.
“Trust me,” he says, guiding her by the small of her back up the rickety stairs.
Emma peers down from above, waiving her hand erratically. “Hurry!” she exclaims in a whisper.
With a resounding thud, the trap door is brought up and latched with a small clasp.
“If we stay quiet, they will eventually go away,” Jacob reveals.
“But there were so many of them.”
April moves to a lawn chair positioned at the edge of the hatch.
“We’ll be fine; we just have to wait them out. Just stay quiet and they’ll go away,” Jacob says, taking a seat on a plank of wood nailed to the support beams. “They’ve done this before.”
April’s attention is diverted to Jacob. “They’ve done this before?” she questions.
“When I first brought Emma here...” he says, “when this all began. The dead eventually give up if they can’t sense the living. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes it takes days,” he replies.
“Days?!” she exclaims. “We could starve.”
Jacob points to the far side of the attic at a stack of boxes. “We’re well supplied.”
April begins to relax when she sees the crates of canned food and bottled water. “But won’t they be able to get into the house?”
“Not unless they carry hacksaws,” he says with a smile.
The dead scrape and pound at the walls and window jams downstairs, moaning out a violent hymn, gathering numbers. Emma cowers in the corner of the attic, using the crate of canned food as a back rest. Every sound makes her jump; every groan sends a shock through her tiny frame. She remembers when her mother was taken, feels every image as if it were happening all over again.
She was young, and unable to understand the horror that was playing out when the dead began to rise. Her mother was crying, tears streaming down her soft, white face as she listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. “Daddy won’t be coming home,” she had said. Emma didn’t understand the consequences of her mother’s words, and never asked why. She assumed that he was going on another business trip.
Emma and her mother stayed locked away in their house for eight days before the lack of food prompted them to leave. The weather was becoming bitter as winter approached and Emma’s mother had bundled her up in some blankets from the closet. She looked like a vagabond with so many layers constructed about her tiny frame.
“Mommy, where are we going to go?” Emma asked.
“We’re going to visit grandpa,” she spoke hastily. “Now I need you to be very quiet. There are bad people outside and if they hear us, they will try to hurt us.”
“Why would they do that?” the child questioned.
“Because that’s what bad people do,” she replied.
The front door had creaked ever so slightly as Emma’s mother opened it into the house. A cool blast of air rushed in, making Emma shiver beneath the blankets. Something hissed and let out a cry like Emma had never heard before. She remembers being pushed through the house as her mother whimpered. The sound of her breath made Emma want to cry.
Her mother screamed in pain as Emma was tossed about the house, the slit in the front of the blankets only allowing a blur of vision through. She was spun around and knocked to the floor. Dozens of feet appeared, trampling, rotten. All at once, the blankets began to come off. Wretched faces appeared. Growling, sneering mouths stained in blood.
Emma escaped through a forest of arms and gnarled hands and ran when she felt her feet make contact with the floor. From behind her, she heard her mother gargle and gasp between a series of wet slaps and tearing sounds.
Through the backyard and out into the alleyway behind the house, Emma fled. Her little heart raced through the confusion and panic. Ahead, hungry faces peered through a faint mist in the alley. She stopped cold.
Crack! The sound shook the child and she turned away to flee down the other side of the alley.
“Emma!” a voice exclaimed.
She waited for a moment, unsure of the voice.
“Emma!” again, the voice proclaimed, excited and frightened.
Emma looked through the backyard, beyond the bushes and towards the door from which she fled. Her grandfather was standing there, a pistol held upwards at his side. He ran to her, gnashing faces at the door behind him, reaching, clawing as he moved away.
Along the other end of the alley, the dead began to come towards the child, struggling with their movements. Limbs dragging, voices bellowing through the air. Jacob scooped the child up into his arms and ran. Emma remembers being jostled around as her grandfather fled.
“Hold on tight,” he instructed.
Wind licked at her hair and numbed her face. There was pain in her grandfather’s voice as he struggled with her weight. He tripped, but held firmly to Emma. In an instant, he was back on his feet, running once more, but with a limp in his step.
Eventually, Jacob was able to slow his pace. His breath was labored and erratic like the wheezing of a slowly deflating balloon. Emma held tight to his shoulders, nestling her face into his neck. She only looked up long enough to watch as they passed a burning car. Skeletal hands clasped at the window frame as if the bones were trying to escape the heat. She let out the faintest cry and returned her face to the pit of Jacob’s neck.
“It’s all right,” he tried to calm her, “Don’t look at it.”
She whimpered and covered her face with his shoulder.
“Are you okay,” April asks as she kneels down to the child.
“They’re so loud,” she replies.
“It’ll be all right. We’re safe up here, they can’t find us,” April says, trying to comfort her.
“I know,” she meets April’s eyes, “but do they have to be noisy?”
A snicker escapes through April’s nose. “I think that’s a part of being the way they are.”
From beside the hatch, Jacob wheezes as he pains through his breath. His skin has turned an awful shade of white. He closes his eyes and concentrates on every breath. Numbness begins to settle into his arm, coursing up in gentle waves before an intense pain surges in his chest. The attic spins around him like a top; images whirl like a dust devil above his head.
With a thwack, Jacobs head hits the floor.
“Jacob!” April yells.
“Grandpa?” Emma says, staring at her grandfather.
Jacob’s body lays still as April checks for a pulse, “Jacob!” she exclaims and beats on his chest. Each beat to his sternum resounds with a dull thud. Pinching his nose, April leans in and tries to resuscitate him, blowing air into his lungs before beating on his chest again. “Come on, Jacob. Don’t do this!”
In shock, Emma hugs her legs into herself. She can’t bring herself to move. Rocking slightly, back and forth, she sobs nervously as April continues to pound at her grandfather’s chest.
“Damn it! Breathe!” April commands. She counts down in her head for every pump of his chest and blows air into his idle lungs. Sweat dampens her shirt as she continues to assault Jacob’s chest. “Please, don’t do this,” she begs.
Exhausted, she leans back.
“Grandpa?!” Emma wails and runs toward the body.
April grabs the girl and pulls her into herself before she can get at the body. Emma struggles, sobbing. The child shakes, restrained by a single arm and collapses into a ball. Carefully, April brushes the child’s hair out of her face. “That’s it, let it all out,” she whispers.
The sound of crunching hits April’s ears before she actually feels the pain. A rush of agony ascends her arm as Jacob’s teeth rip away a thin string of flesh. The blood doesn’t come, only anguish. She looks down at the wound in shock as the child flees from her arms, retreating to the back of the attic. Grabbing the pistol from the side of Jacob’s animated corpse, April falls backward and pushes herself away, scooting on her backside across the attic floor.
Terror graces her face as she watches Jacob begin to rise. His movements are uncoordinated and slow, making his limbs recoil as if he were in pain. Twisting fingers uncurl; extend outward from his hand, grasping. Sickening air rises from his throat like the last breath of a struggling soul awaiting the torment of fire.
April takes aim with the pistol as Jacob wavers on his knees, trying to stand. He begins to steady his awkward body upon stiffening knees and wavers in place, staring. The color has already left his face as April applies pressure to the trigge
r, steadying her aim.
Snap! The firing pin hits nothing.
She cocks the weapon and loads a round into the chamber as Jacob leans in and swipes at her. Aiming once again, she centers the sights and exhales.
With a crack, the weapon fires, sending a round into Jacob’s chest, and knocks him flat to the floor. The corpse struggles to stand and turns over to push itself up on all fours. She levels the weapon again as Emma screams from behind.
The report is deafening in the small space as the round explodes through Jacob’s ghoulish eye. Shards of skull spray from behind his head, showering the support beams in gore. His body falls backward and crashes through the hatch. With a loud thud, he hits the floor below, sending the sounds of splintering wood back up into the attic.
“No!” Emma screams and runs toward the trap door.
April lets the child look over, lets her cry out and scream for her grandfather.
The pain in her arm begins to rise as the blood trickles from the wound. It’s only a matter of time, she thinks with a sigh.
Emma watches as the woman’s face turns pale, washing out as she writhes on the floor in pain. Her breath is heavy as her chest rises and falls under her sweat stained shirt.
It has been a few hours since the dead began bombarding the house, and they are beginning to quiet down. Between rasping breath, the attic is silent as the child sits by April’s side.
“I need you to do something for me,” April says; her voice soft and hallow.
Emma peers down at her. “What?” she asks in low, mousy tone.
She scoots the pistol across the floor with a dry scrape. “Don’t let me turn into one of those things,” she coughs out. “When the time comes, I want you to take care of me.”
The child scoots back away from her, shaken by the thought.
“I know you’re young, but you know what it means if I change. You know what needs to be done.”
Emma shakes her head no. “I can’t.”
“I’ve seen you do it. I’ve seen you kill those things,” her lungs rattle. “Please, do it for me, Emma.”
Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel Page 14