Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  Kelly’s response to the yelling was to yell back. Even the little kids could tell her heart wasn’t in it though. She obviously knew she’d screwed up. Plus, her excuses sounded super weak.

  “We didn’t have time to plan! We don’t have time to do anything! The damned Brotherhood will be knocking on the door any day now. You and Kyler need medicine and rest. So, shut up and rest. I did get some more antibiotics by the way. You’re welcome for not letting you die.” Kelly said with what she probably felt was just the right amount of sarcasm.

  “Thank you. I was worried about you babe. Promise me you won’t do it again.” Caitlyn leaned in trying to catch the rest of the conversation. Her dad had lowered the volume on his responses quite a bit. Her mom said something back then flung the door open and came walking out into the area all the kids had gathered in. She stopped when she saw them all staring at her.

  “Yes?” She asked.

  “Just being nosey.” Myriah finally said into the awkward silence.

  “Why is daddy so mad? He was yelling. We’re not supposed to ever yell.” Zoey chimed in. She cocked her head staring at her mom waiting for the answer to her question.

  Kelly took in her kids all standing there looking at her expectantly. Their faces trusting and innocent for the most part. The innocence she saw in their eyes was pretty insane considering what they’d all lived through over the last couple of years. For the first time she noticed how much they’d all grown. Caitlyn and Myriah were definitely both young women now. Even the littles were starting to be less little. It made her sad that they were growing up in a land where they were forced to hunker down and stay quiet most of the time. It pissed her off that they were being deprived of a normal childhood.

  “Mommy and daddy were just discussing the best way to keep going. Your dad was scared because I went out on my own. I promised him I wouldn’t do that again unless we didn’t have any other choice. Sorry we got so loud. Always remember how much your mom and dad love all of you.” Kelly’s little speech ended in a lovefest as all the kids came in for hugs and kisses.

  The lovefest was interrupted by the sound of something smacking the front door. Everyone instantly got low and quiet. Weapons came out as they all shifted around. Caitlyn and her mom moved between the door and the others. Myriah took the littles back into their dad’s room to hide. Randy would be sitting up and getting armed to serve as another line of defense in case the threat made it past Kelly and Caitlyn. Kelly belatedly realized they’d neglected to include Kyler in this plan. Hopefully this turned out to be nothing and he’d sleep through the whole ordeal.

  A window on the kitchen was smacked hard from the outside a minute later. Something was going around the house trying to find an easy way inside. At least Kelly hoped it was just a single something circling the house and not a whole pack of adrenalized Zombies. Her knee jerk reaction was that this was one of those Zombies with the super sensitive hearing. It almost made her glad that Kyler was sleeping. If he’d been awake, she’d have had to deal with the look that he’d have given her for yelling in the house.

  They had the curtains pulled over all the windows. They’d used tape where needed to make sure the curtains stayed closed. They hadn’t really put a ton of thought into defending this house other than doing what they always did when securing a home. The house had a big glass slider in the back and way too many windows. If the Zombie felt like getting inside, then the windows wouldn’t keep it out for very long. Kelly had a hatchet in each hand ready to fight if the Zombie decided to try and come in through a window. She was hoping it’d just go away. If it broke a window, they’d have to go find another house and she was tired.

  It was quiet again for a while. They began to hope the Zombie may have wandered away. Kelly and Caitlyn bit back startled shrieks when the back slider was violently shaken. The slider continued to shake for a solid minute. The entire time they were convinced it was going to be flung open at any second. Kelly stood ready with her hatchets while Caitlyn was sporting the medieval looking miniature battle ax her dad had been lugging around with him until recently. It may not be the most practical weapon, but it worked really well for splitting skulls and looked cool doing it.

  The slider stopped shaking. They sat there with their hearts beating wildly not hearing anything else for about thirty minutes. Tired of squatting on the floor Kelly signaled for Caitlyn to stay where she was. Kelly slowly began crawling towards the back slider to see if she was able to see anything out there. The slider had large, hanging brown vinyl verticals covering it. They weren’t the normal thin plastic verticals you saw hanging in front of most sliders. These were the upscale cousins of those kind of verticals. The nice thing about them being that they were much less susceptible to shifting around and letting monsters outside your home see you on the inside. It was one of the things Kelly really loved about that those particular window dressings.

  She slithered on her stomach like a snake taking its time to get across the yard. She seemed like the California hippie snake who’d been back behind the barn poking holes in a tin can to try out a fresh bag of buds. She was really just trying to be the snake who didn’t get cut in half by the startled farmer with a hoe. She reminded herself that ‘slow and steady wins the race’ over and over again as she spent a good ten minutes crawling across the floor. She finally maneuvered herself into a vantage point where she had a clear view through the miniscule gap between the bottom of the brown verticals and the floor.

  In the dim early morning light, she was having difficulties making out what the shapes she could see through the small gap might be. There could be a couple of Zombies outside or she could be getting freaked out by the plastic chairs that were scattered around on the back porch. She was racking her brain trying to remember what all was out there. The one thing she could easily picture was the couch with the corpse on it. She knew they’d slid it as far over on the patio as they could. That eliminated the couch as being one of the shapes she was seeing through the narrow gap.

  She’d been out on the porch a few times. She’d peeked out through the back sliders and windows a few times as well. She knew there was a glass table and some red patio furniture but couldn’t remember where they’d left it sitting on the porch for the life of her. She was wondering if her subconscious had blocked her memories of the patio because of the dead body back there. The kitty cat gnawed remains of the owner were lying under the tarp next to the mummies of the felines themselves. All that weirdness may have overwhelmed her memories of the more mundane parts of the patio.

  She worked on trying to identify each individual shadow thinking it may be easier if she isolated the shapes instead of trying to take then all in at once. There was a reddish shadow on the far side of the slider closest to the house. Knowing that the plastic chairs out on the back porch were red she mentally crossed that shadow off the list and moved on to the next one. It was another red shadow. Assuming it was the other chair leg she started to move along to the next shadow. She stopped when the initial chair leg moved. More accurately the thing she’d assumed was a chair leg suddenly disappeared.

  Kelly’s eyes darted back to the other shadow she’d identified as a chair leg. It was moving as well. She realized the chair legs must actually be Zombie legs a split second before the Zombie began slamming itself into the sliding glass door again. This time it was hitting the door even harder. Kelly didn’t see how the door was going to survive the ferocious onslaught. Given that she was going to have to choose fight or flight very soon she went ahead and stood up. She noticed Caitlyn walking towards her and waved at her to go into Randy’s room. It occurred to her again that they should’ve gone and checked on Kyler during the down time they’d just had.

  A loud crack indicated the Zombie had managed to cause some serious damage to the sliding glass door frame. Kelly slid to the side hoping the Zombie would come stumbling in over the broken glass and get stuck on the frame. If the Zombie got stuck, she could just step in quickly and whack
it in the head a few times with her hatchets. That should take care of the unwanted party crasher. She took a deep breath and got ready to do what needed to be done.

  The Zombie stopped hitting the slider. The verticals had shifted a little bit with that last hit indicating the door had definitely been damaged. Kelly leaned back against the wall working hard on controlling her breathing. If the one outside really did have the super hearing, then she didn’t want to make too much noise. As to why the Zombie had stopped hitting the door when it was almost through, she didn’t even give that another thought. They’d seen Zombies doing all kinds of weird stuff in the past that made no sense. She was concerned that if the Zombie decided to come through the slider now that they wouldn’t have as much warning since it was probably only one or two more hits from smashing its way in.

  Hoping she was doing the right thing she got back on her knees and put her head near the floor to look under the verticals again. She could see the shadows she now recognized as Zombie legs. She was keeping her eyes peeled on those when something started striking the window in the front of the house. The shadows of the Zombie legs on the patio disappeared as soon as the noise started in the front of the house.

  The window in the front of the house was nowhere near as sturdy as the sliding glass door in the back had proven itself to be. The noises from the front of the house quickly leading to the sound of breaking glass. Kelly wanted to call out a warning to the kids and Randy but knew this wasn’t a good time to make any extra noise. It wasn’t like they would’ve missed the sounds of the window being smashed in. She slipped past the room the kids were in and motioned for them to continue hiding. Without waiting to see if they did so or not, she headed down the hall past the slider and into the bedroom Kyler was in.

  Kicking herself for not putting Kyler and Randy in the same room to begin with she went to the bed Kyler was in and nudged him a few times on the shoulder. His eyes fluttered opened and gradually focused on her through the glaze of medicinal sleep that covered them. She’d obviously overdid the prescription pain killers again. Hoping that she hadn’t administered him anything life threatening she put her fingers to her lips to let him know to be quiet. She saw his lips start to move before he processed her shushing gesture. A concerned look came into his eyes and he sat up straight looking around. He realized he was only half dressed which was going to be an issue.

  Kelly was already grabbing his clothes and handing them to him. The nightstand drawers had been shoved full of his weapons. She didn’t think she should try to open those right now since it’d make all kinds of noise. She didn’t think Kyler was drugged up enough to be willing to leave the room without getting all his weapons though. Especially not when there was the sound of more breaking glass coming from the front of the house. He slipped quietly out of the bed and promptly collapsed onto the floor.

  Between the drugs, the infection, the chunk missing from his leg and the fever he wasn’t in the best shape to be trying to sneak around in a house that Zombies were breaking into. Especially not when the Zombies were likely the ones with the new and improved hearing capabilities. Or at least some of the ones outside must be or they wouldn’t have had any reason to be here. Kyler lay on the ground looking up at her. He was wiped out.

  Kelly realized that they weren’t going to be able to get him out of the house quietly. That meant they had a couple of choices. Sit in the house in full operational silence and hope the Zombies went away or go outside and try to kill the Zombies that were out there. If they killed them with melee weapons before any of them screeched, then they should be good. If the damned things saw them and started screeching, then they were screwed. She filed taking the fight to the Zombies under last resorts and focused in on what they could do to get the Zombies outside to just get bored and leave. Luckily the energy efficient windows were high quality which was why the Zombies hadn’t already gotten inside. The sounds they were hearing now seemed almost like the Zombies were just going through the motions.

  If the Zombies really thought that there were people inside this house, they’d be ripping it apart and screeching their heads off. What seemed to be happening now was another Zombie had wandered up to join the original one and they were kind of causally breaking in. The original Zombie still going on what it’d heard off in the distance when Kelly and Randy had been arguing. Or maybe the Zombies had followed the sound of her car back to this house. Either way they just needed to hunker down now and hopefully the two outside would hear something else off in the distance and wander away. If they did manage to break in, then Kelly would be waiting for them with a hatchet to the head hello.

  The day wore on. Kelly had gotten Kyler back up into his bed. She’d been surprised by how light he’d gotten. They’d dragged him around for the last few days, so she knew how heavy he’d been. Even accounting for him not wearing his weapons in bed he seemed to have really shed some pounds over the last couple of days. She was also worried about how hot he was. His fever must really be getting up there. He was radiating heat like an old furnace. She could feel it rolling off him in waves as she maneuvered him back into the bed. She handed him his pistol and watched him eyeball it to make sure it was ready to go. She hadn’t bothered handing him any kind of bladed weapon since in his state there was no way he’d be able to use one. If the Zombies made it into his room his only chances were going to be shooting them in the head or hoping that he tasted bad.

  She stood there getting her breathing under control after hefting Kyler into the bed and tried to think of what she could do next. She wished she could just move Kyler into the room with everyone else. Having to worry about two different rooms with wounded in them both was a major pain. She was worried moving him would make too much noise though. Even without the bionic hearing a Zombie may hear some sort of sound if she was dragging Kyler around the house. She slipped off her boots so she could pad around the house in her socks and went to check on Randy and the girls.

  Randy had his pen and notebook out when she walked in. He held it up to her as she walked in. She read what he’d written and nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion she had as to what they needed to do next. Basically, sit in the house and hope the Zombies got bored and left. If the Zombies did break in, they’d try and kill them as quickly and quietly as possible. There really wasn’t much more they could do. Kelly was writing Randy back in the notebook to tell him she was worried about Kyler when one of the windowpanes to the bedroom they were in shattered. They watched as an arm got tangled up in the curtain then was pulled back out. The curtains managed to stay in place.

  None of them moved. They all did their best to hold their breaths. They couldn’t see anything through the heavy drapery over the window. Kelly held Randy’s hand tightly. She motioned for Caitlyn to be ready and Myriah to keep the kids quiet. When nothing else happened for about ten minutes they all relaxed again. There was just no way to keep up the kind of vigilance they needed to keep up at all times without taking breaks. If you lived in terror twenty-four hours a day everyday then at a certain point you got used to it to a degree. Luckily, they were all sturdy souls as it was shaping up to be one of those long terror filled days.

  Chapter 14: Home Invasion

  The day slowly wound down after a few more incidents of pounding on the windows and doors. It’d started raining sometime after lunchtime. Just a light drizzle at first that was barely even noticeable from inside the house. As the day wore on the rain showers became slowly more intense. The sound of the rain hitting the roof lulled them all into a false sense of security. That false sense of security made it even more horrifying when there was a banging or knocking noise from somewhere outside the house.

  At least they were all in the same room now. Kelly had recruited Myriah and Caitlyn to help her relocate Kyler to the room the rest of them were in. They’d managed to drag his bed over without making any noise. It’d required inventing their own sign language and working in their socks but had worked. Kyler was curled int
o a fetal position now on the bed in the corner. He was fully dressed and even had some of his weapons strapped on. He wasn’t looking like the apocalyptic warrior they’d first met. He looked like a crippled eighty-year-old man had possessed his body. They’d all been extremely worried about how hot he felt as they walked him over to the room. He was still radiating heat like an open oven. He’d collapsed onto the bed once they got him into the room and hadn’t moved since then. She’d already checked his breathing once just to make sure he was still alive.

  They’d locked the door to the room and dragged a chest of drawers in front of it. The taller chest of drawers in the room was now sitting in front of the window. Neither obstacle would do much to stop the Zombies from getting in if they really wanted in. The idea was more about being a deterrent to any Zombies looking to casually enter the home to nest for the night. Based on their observations of nesting Zombies the beasts gravitated towards the easiest shelter they could find. This house already had some broken windows so it would be on the short list.