by Alex Apostol
“Hey Anna, I’m glad I found—”
He stopped, using the doorway for support.
Anna’s mother and father looked to Lee with their mouths agape, their milky eyes scanning his body. They turned their backs to continue with the meal already spread out before them. Mrs. Hadley picked up a dismembered arm from the floor and began gnawing at it like it was a turkey leg. Mr. Hadley lowered his face to rip off a piece of flesh from the foot in his hand.
Tears cascaded down Lee’s face. His hands shook as he raised them to cover his mouth. The urge to scream overwhelmed him, but all that came out were muffled sobs.
Anna stared at her husband from the floor, her face permanently petrified in a silent, agonizing cry. Black webs of tears and mascara covered her cheeks. Her neck was ravaged to strips of broken veins and exposed muscles. Everything below her shoulders was unrecognizable—ripped apart, half-eaten, and smashed until she was nothing more than a pile of chunks and blood. Every limb had been removed, picked clean by her parents, and left on the floor like discarded chicken bones.
Lee’s vision started to blur, its focus tunneling on the monsters devouring his wife. The room shook and spun as he dropped to his knees. With his hands on the floor, he cried out to the ceiling as loud as he could. He choked on his tears and struggled to take in a breath.
The two chewing figures in front of him dropped the bloodied pieces of his wife and turned slowly toward him. Mr. Hadley gnawed at his own lips in anticipation of more warm flesh to consume. Mrs. Hadley took several staggering steps away from the remains, one of her legs twisted at the knee, bent at an unsettling angle.
Lee finally opened his drowning eyes and saw the two were headed for him, their stomachs bulging from their feed. He cried out again. Heat spread through his chest as a fire deep in him grew ferociously. He rose to his feet, his broad shoulders rising and falling as he huffed through his nostrils. A deep growl filled the room. It was coming from him.
Mr. Hadley was the first to reach him. Without hesitation, he reached out and grabbed the walking corpse by the head with both hands. Every ounce of muscle worked to squeeze together until he felt the crunching of bones beneath his fingers. Their heads were not solid like those of a living human. They were soft and porous, as if the process of decomposition had sped up. His father-in-law’s mouth continued to bite at the air until his head caved in completely and his brains leaked out through his ears.
Lee screamed all the while, only stopping to take another breath and start back up again. He had to make them pay for what they did, for taking his Anna and child away from him, for ruining any chance he had at happiness in this fucked up world. It wasn’t his will to live that pushed him forward anymore. It was vengeance.
Mrs. Hadley grabbed him by the shoulder, but was too slow to get any further. Lee thrust his massive forearm upward and snapped her arm from underneath. Sharp bone stuck out from what used to be her elbow as the rest hung limply inward toward her body.
The low rumbling within Lee grew with intensity. His eyes burned white-hot as he stared down. He didn’t see his mother-in-law of fifteen years staring back at him as he had seen in Heidi and Mrs. Higgins before. The thing in front of him was something straight out of the pits of Hell.
Lee swooped down to pick up one of the pots lying on the tile floor. As he cried out, he swung it at the thing’s head over and over again. Blood sprayed his face, but he didn’t stop. Its body fell face-down onto the floor, but refused to stay down. Lee beat the thing’s head until it was nothing more than a dark soupy mess. Only then did he drop the pot with a loud clank.
X.
His mother-in-law was dead. His father-in-law, dead. His beautiful wife and their unborn child, all dead. Lee Hickey was a man with nothing to live for. At least, that’s how he felt when he stared down at the three bloodied bodies on the floor. He’d cried so hard that there was nothing left inside. He felt numb. That was a good thing. If he was able to fully comprehend the extent of his loss that afternoon, he would have dropped dead of a broken heart.
He wiped away the salt from his cheeks where his tears had dried. It was time to go. He knew that for the last twenty minutes, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up. How was he supposed to walk away from his wife? He couldn’t leave her body in pieces. He had to bury her, mark the site, and pray he would be reunited with her in the afterlife.
But since his savagery, there had been an increase in noise outside the house—shuffling feet, the banging of hands on glass, distant moans and the clacking of teeth. If he wanted to live, he had to get out of there before the place was overrun.
But did he want to live?
Though it pained him to think of leaving Anna like she was, it was best until he figured out if he’d be able to go on without her or not.
“I’ll come back for you,” he promised her as he pushed up from the floor.
He ran up to the second-floor bathroom, the one that contained his mother-in-law’s medicine cabinet, and flung the door open. Every inch of the four shelves inside contained various prescription bottles, antiseptics, ointments, bandages, and anything else anyone could ever want during a zombie apocalypse. Furiously, he grabbed at the bottles and shoved them into the pockets of his cargo shorts.
Glass crashed outside. Lee turned to peek his head into the hallway. It hadn’t sounded close enough to have been one of the house windows breaking, but it could have happened nearby, like the driveway.
His car.
Lee raced down the stairs and threw open the front door. Every inch of his Honda was crawling with the dead. His front windshield lay in shards. The hood and trunk were dented beyond repair as their solid bodies lumbered up, searching for a way in. What were they after? Lee didn’t have time to wonder what caused the horde to surround his car. All he knew was that he had to leave it. He couldn’t fight off a dozen of those things by himself.
He turned and hopped over the porch railing to run around back. The soft thud of his massive feet on the grass made heads turn. Their focus changed from ransacking the car to following Lee alongside the house. With their arms outstretched and their stained mouths already chewing in anticipation, they moved slowly after him.
As Lee ran through the trees lining the lakefront, the bottles of pills shook like rattles in his pockets. If he wanted to stay hidden, he had to move with more stealth. Those things would be all over him if he kept making so much noise. But it was too late. When he hunched over to catch his breath he saw a site that nearly stopped his already broken heart.
Over the sand dune, a horde of several dozen zombies shuffled together. Each and every glazed over, bloodshot eye was zeroed in on him. Though they were more than twenty yards away, he saw their black tongues slathering their white crusted lips. Dark blood and bile oozed out of every orifice, including the ones created from the mouths of others.
Lee stooped down into the tall grass, but it was useless. He wouldn’t be able to conceal his large frame there. He couldn’t hide anywhere. The trunks of the trees were too skinny to hide behind, the branches too high up to climb. The lakefront was nothing but a stretch of openness and sand. If he ran, they would follow the noise he made. If he ditched the prescriptions, he might not survive. They were his most valuable resource. He had to run and hope that he could put enough distance between himself and the horde to be able to lose them.
The black mass of bodies descended the dune. Some stumbled over their own feet and fell, their faces pressed into the sand as they were trampled on. Others rolled down and got back up without missing a beat. They weren’t fast, but they were relentless, like a swarm of locusts swooping in to destroy everything in its path.
Lee took off again through the trees and over a nearby dune until he reached a fence surrounding someone’s backyard. With a running start, he hopped the chain-link and landed on the other side. Maybe whoever was inside would allow him to wait it out with them. If there was no one home, he could jimmy the lock open with his pocketknife.
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br /> He walked around the side of the two-story green house hunched over at the waist. The element of surprise was his friend. There was no telling what he would find on the other side of the front door. He had to be ready for anything.
As he stood on the porch, he inwardly debated his next move. Should he knock? Things weren’t so far gone that he should just barge into someone else’s home unannounced. Civilization hadn’t collapsed completely. Or had it? He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that it didn’t feel right to him. But if the dead were inside, it would alert them to fresh meat.
A breeze blew off the lake, carrying the stench of death with it. It reminded Lee of hot, rotting meat mixed with shit. In his profession he came across a lot of foul-smelling things. Nothing was as God awful as what wafted up his nose at that moment. The only thing that could create such a stench would be the gaggle of rotting corpses following him. They were close. He had to find shelter fast.
Urgently, he beat his fist against the heavy wooden door.
“Hello? Is someone home?” he called out “Please, let me in. Hello? They’re coming! Please!”
He heard a faint thud, as if someone had bumped into something. The curtain in the window by the door moved.
“Please! I need to come in, please!”
The curtain moved again and Lee saw the terrified face of a girl about seven years old. Her blonde hair was pulled back into two long pigtails and she wore a summer nightgown. She hugged a teddy-bear close to her neck.
“Are your parents home? Please, can you let me in? I promise, I won’t hurt you. I can keep you safe. I just need to come inside,” he pleaded with the girl.
Her eyes grew wide until Lee could see the whites on all sides. The teddy dropped from her grasp and her mouth hung open. She pointed out the window past Lee. Her piercing scream told him exactly what was approaching.
The hum of the horde echoed down the street as they shambled up the driveway. Lee turned and pressed his back against the door.
“Let me in, please, let me in!” he started to shout to the frightened girl. “Dammit, let me in!”
The first few zombies reached the porch. They tried to raise their feet to make the first step, but their muscles were already stiff with rigor mortis, their knees unable to bend properly. One got its foot on the step, but then fell backward onto the walkway. Another kicked the head of the fallen and fell forward, landing face down on the first one’s stomach.
The group started to spread out along the porch, reaching their arms through the banisters to swipe for Lee’s legs. His back pressed further into the door, his heels hitting the jamb. He felt the cool touch of fingers grazing the hairs on his legs. If just one of them gained another inch, they would have him.
Lee turned his head and saw that the little girl had left her perch at the window. He didn’t hear the patter of her footsteps coming to the door.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
Another set of fingers touched his leg. If one of their fingernails scratched his skin there was a chance he could become infected. Lee was pressed so hard against the door that he wouldn’t allow himself to take a full breath. Instead, his chest flared rapidly with shallowed wheezing. His eyes moved to look down.
All of the undead had gathered around the length of the shallow porch. Any way he could have used as in exit was blocked by gnashing teeth and mottled hands. Then, his eyes turned upward. Above his head was a small, triangular overhang. If he jumped he might be able to grab onto it and pull himself up.
The thought sent his stomach churning. If he didn’t make it they would have him in a matter of seconds. But if he didn’t try he would be stuck on that porch eternally. The girl inside was not going to open for anything. There was no other way. If there was ever a moment for Lee to be thankful of his grand stature, it was now.
His heartbeat thumped in his eardrums. His chest clenched.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
He looked one last time to see if the girl was watching from the window, if there was the slightest chance that she might open the door and give him the shelter he so desperately needed, but she wasn’t there. Lee closed his eyes and turned his face upward toward the sun.
“And lead us not into temptation.”
He took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled out from between his parted lips.
“But deliver us from evil!”
He bent his knees and shot upward toward the awning, his body twisting in mid-air. The hot summer sun beat against his face. All he could see was its white blaze. He stretched his arms as far as he could, but felt nothing.
“Amen.”
XI.
The ends of Lee’s fingers gripped the edge of the roof peak. He adjusted his hands for a better hold. Every muscle in his arms shook as he attempted to lift all two hundred pounds of his body.
The growls from the dead grew with intensity as their meal dangled over their heads. Their fingers grasped at thin air in the hopes that the man above would fall into their arms.
Lee felt a cool, damp hand swat his ankle. He quickly tucked his legs up under him as he pulled himself upward. Finally, he was able to rest an arm on the roof. The black shingles burned at his skin. The urge to pull back overwhelmed his nerves, but he resisted.
Using his scolding arm as leverage, he pulled himself further up until he was able to rest both arms and swing one leg over. He yelled out deeply as he conjured every last ounce of strength he had in him to throw himself over the edge of the overhang.
He lay on his back, feet braced for support, his arms raised above his head to grip the peak to hold him in place. His chest rose and fell in full breaths. He turned his face to look down at the mass of ravenous beings a few feet below him.
Though the tempting flesh had moved farther away, they didn’t give up or lose interest. Instead, they fought harder, using each other as leverage to climb up onto the porch. They fell, one-by-one, over the railing and landed with cracks and thuds.
Lee was safe for now, but how long would he last up on that roof? Without water in the blistering heat it wouldn’t be long. His only chance was to venture further up where he would be hidden from plain sight. Maybe if they couldn’t see him they would move on.
Maybe someone else will wander by and they could go after them, leaving me enough time to climb down and get away.
The very thought disgusted Lee. He couldn’t believe his mind had gone to something so hateful and cruel. He threw an arm over his face and hid his eyes in the crook. The scent of burnt flesh traveled up his nose and settled in his stomach. He was too angry with himself to see how bad the burns were.
Even if he got away this time, there would only be more at the next place he tried to hide. And more after that, and more after that. There was no getting away from them. The infection was spreading too quickly. Who knows how far it had traveled already. Maybe it had consumed all of Chesterton, all of Northwest Indiana, all of the Midwest!
Panic rose in his chest. He had to get ahold of himself. If Anna were alive, she wouldn’t want him to give up. She would want him to survive for as long as he could and help others to survive as well. She wouldn’t want him to be angry with the little girl for not letting him in. That wasn’t what Lee Hickey would have felt yesterday. That Lee Hickey would have worried himself sick that the murderous monsters would find a way into the house to get her. He had to find himself again.
At that, the primal instinct for self-preservation was pushed aside by the more intense desire to save lives. It was what he was made to do. He decided he would do whatever he could to get the girl out of there safely and find somewhere they could hide out. He would save her, not curse her.
Lee pushed himself upward with the soles of his shoes and grabbed onto the next tier in the angular roof.
With ease this time, he swung himself up to lay on his stomach ove
rlooking the driveway of the overrun house. The creatures were still pawing at the air, some beating against the door and window now that they had found a way onto the porch. They weren’t able to see Lee slip back out of view.
He stood erect for a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. More were coming from the north, probably lured by the sound of their own kind closing in. A few straggled alone to the east near another house that appeared to be empty.
West. That was the direction Lee had to go if he wanted to make it out of there alive…but first, he had to get the little girl.
Carefully, he moved around the sloped shingles to the back of the house. There were several windows on the second floor to choose from. As he lay on his stomach again, his head leaning over the edge to see inside, he spotted the girl curled up in the fetal position on her twin bed. Her hands grabbed desperately at her head as her shoulders moved up and down with sobs.
Lee stood up and moved over to the next window. Inside was another bedroom, empty. He squatted with his feet balanced over the edge, his fingers loosely gripping the edge of the roof like a perched gargoyle.
He looked down at the length of the drop. At least the yard was fenced in, leaving a clear open space free of zombies. If he fell he might break his leg or sprain his arm, but at least he wouldn’t be devoured alive. But if he made too much noise, they would gather at the fence leaving him no way out. He couldn’t rely on the girl letting him in again, and there was no low hanging roof peak to swing himself up onto from that side of the house.
That meant he had one shot at this.
He closed his eyes and let the thick breeze blow gently through his hair.
I can do this, he thought to himself calmly, I have to do this. I have to save her.
With a deep breath, he leaned over the edge and fell forward.