by Brian James
I cover my ears to muffle the sound of his voice.
“You’re not my family,” I scream.
The sheriff laughs. A grinding machine-gun laugh that I feel in the hollow center of my bones. “I checked into your past before we recruited you,” he says. “You’re the perfect candidate for our community. Athletic. Pretty. A desire to be popular. And most important, you have no other family. Not except your dad, but don’t worry . . . I’ve made arrangements for him to join us, too.”
“Leave me alone!” I yell.
Lukas grabs my arm. Tells me not to listen to him. Pulling me toward the sliding glass door in the kitchen as the sheriff’s stiff boots move without being seen, getting closer without lifting his feet.
“Still a pest, huh?” the sheriff says to Lukas. “I never should’ve let you make it home the other night. I would’ve gotten rid of you if I didn’t think it would alarm our new cheerleader here. But I suppose you’re expendable now. Maybe we could use what’s left of you for the football team.”
“Piss off!” Lukas sneers.
“If you like, we could use his blood in your boyfriend,” he says to me. “Would that makes things easier for you?” Laughing at the suggestion. Laughing at us, at what they’re going to do to us. Laughter that sounds like a weapon ringing in my ears as I try and remember to breathe.
A gust of snow blows into the broken window along with the echo of marching zombies. I see a crowd of them coming around the curve. Some dressed like cheerleaders. Some dressed like football players. Others dressed like the people who work in the shops, in the diner, in the pharmacy, and in our school. I cover my mouth so the sheriff won’t hear me sob in shock. “The whole town?” I mumble to myself. “The whole town.”
“Including us if we don’t go right now!” Lukas tells me.
The blast of cold air fills the kitchen when he opens the door. The first figures start to walk up my driveway. I can see Maggie in the front, fingerprints of spilled blood smeared across her face. Meredith, too. And I can see the tiny scratches that split her skin. They don’t bleed. They only make the skin pink and sore. Behind them, I see Mrs. Donner and the bug-eyed girl from the pharmacy. The nice waitress from the diner and Coach Johnson. Other teachers, too. And then I see him. I see Greg. He’s walking in step with the others. Alongside them with the same expression. With the same ghost eyes and sharp teeth like a grasshopper thirsty to chew my face open.
It dawns on me that he was part of their plan all along. Part of the bait to lure me in. Popularity and a popular boyfriend in return for my life. And I fell for it. I fell for him.
“No,” I whisper to myself. Numb and sick to my stomach at the same time. I can’t believe I kissed a zombie! I can’t believe I put my tongue in a corpse’s mouth. That I actually began to love him.
Lukas yanks me toward him and I stumble a step before breaking into a run. There’s no time to think about any of this. No time to try to comprehend it as I hear the mob scrambling into my house. Climbing through the windows and through the doors. Coming around the side of the house, too, as we cross my backyard and make for the woods. They keep pace. Never running, but never slowing down. A determined, steady march that will never stop until they catch us.
“I know someplace we can go,” Lukas says.
I ignore the pine needles that scrape my bare shins and follow him. Taking a glance back to see how much space there is between us and our pursuers. My eyes catch the sheriff standing at the back door of my house. Letting the others pass by. Letting them do his dirty work as he folds his hands across his chest and watches me run.
“They won’t get tired,” I say. “I’ve seen them in practice, they don’t ever get tired.” The thought terrifies me as I’m already breathing in short, small spurts. The cramps in my side come back to the surface, too, even though I thought I had them buried.
I start to fall behind and Lukas takes my hand. He pulls me at his speed and the trees zip past. The entire forest seems to move for us. Trunks shift out of our way and rocks crawl out of our path. I don’t feel the pain in my feet anymore. I don’t feel the cold on my cheeks, either. It’s like nature is making it easier on us. Like nature wants us to win. And for the first time, I feel like maybe we might survive.
That feeling disappears once we make it up the hill where the crumbling brick walls of an old building stand like a gravestone. Our gravestone as the sun begins to sink behind the hills and the clouds grow black with night.
I raise my eyebrows and my mouth drops open in disbelief.
“Here? This is where you wanted to bring us?”
“What?” Lukas says.
“What? If they somehow manage not to catch us, this place will probably collapse and kill us anyway!”
“No, it won’t. Trust me,” he says. “I’ve been through this old factory a million times. There’s a place for us to hide.”
I bring my hands up to my face and start to bite my nails. “I don’t know,” I say, eyeing the building as it seems to shiver in the cold. Lukas is already making his way through a fallen section of the wall. Behind me I can hear the snapping twigs. I can sense an army of rust-colored eyes peering through the shadows as they make their way up the hill.
“Okay, I trust you,” I say, saying it more to myself than to Lukas since he’s already vanished into the belly of the decaying factory.
SIXTEEN
There’s a hole in the ceiling that lets in the last of the twi-light and a flurry of snow. In the shadows, I can see Lukas struggling to move a rusted metal container across the floor. It scrapes against the cement with an irritating scream that sends sleeping birds rustling from their sleep. Their wings silhouette against the clouds as they escape through the ceiling.
I mimic them by holding my arms out to my side.
I’d give anything to borrow their magic for just one hour. Praying for my thin arms to sprout feathers and let the wind lift me up, carrying me to safety over the mountains where they’d never follow me.
“Are you going to help me at all?” Lukas says, panting.
I bring my arms back down to my side and blink away the dream of flight. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” I say. “I don’t even know what we’re doing here!”
I look around the small storage room that we’ve locked ourselves into. The walls are cracked and covered with cobwebs and won’t hold up long to the murderous instinct of those creatures. I’ve seen the kind of strength they have. They will be able to break through in no time.
“Just . . . help me,” Lukas stutters, keeping himself from shouting, from losing his temper. “We have to move these things closer together,” he explains in a calmer voice.
“Why?” I ask even as I start to help him slide the heavy objects into the center of the room. My hands wipe the dust from the sides. The light from above illuminates a faded sticker of a flame. “What’s in these?”
“Some kind of gas,” Lukas says. “They used to do something with this stuff up here a long time ago. These few were left behind. They’ve been here forever.”
The first signs that we have visitors can be heard outside the walls. I can feel the ground vibrate from their marching steps. Dust particles rain down and mix with the snowflakes as the building deteriorates.
Lukas ignores it and continues to slide the containers into the center of the room. But I can’t. I can’t pretend they’re not out there. I can’t pretend we’re safe in here. I grab him by the shoulders and let him see the wild look in my eyes.
“Stop! Just stop!” I scream. “We have to get out of here!”
“NO! Listen to me,” he says. “We have to let them in.”
“Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”
Lukas shoves his hand in his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “This! This is what I’m talking about,” he says and unfolds the page torn from a comic book showing a hoard of zombies surrounding a girl who looks as scared as I must look. “This is how they hunt. In a pack
. All of them will cram in here to get us.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so . . . I feel better already,” I bark at him. “Then what happens? This?” I ask, pointing to the other side of the ripped page where the girl’s body is torn open. Split down the middle with her organs spilling out. Teeth marks up and down her arms where pieces of her clothes are missing.
Lukas answers me by unscrewing the knob on top of one of the canisters. The gas hisses out and fills the room with the stench of spoiled milk. “We have to open these. They won’t be able to smell the gas.”
“Did you read that, too?”
“Will you be serious?” he snaps.
“I thought I was,” I tell him. “You’re the one using a stupid horror comic as our survival guide.”
He shakes his head. Asks me again to trust him and I can’t help but feel like I’m already trusting him with my life and isn’t that enough trust to show for one day. “Look,” he says, trying to calm me down while jumping from canister to canister like a rabbit with nimble hands to open the valves. “Once they’re all inside the building, we just have to light the gas and blow it up,” flashing me the lighter that he brought just in case. Telling me he planned this a long time ago. That he planned it after Alison changed.
“Blow it up? What about us?” I ask. My voice shakes. My hands shake, too, because it all starts to feel so final. Starts to feel so real. Kill or be killed starts to feel real. “How do we get out?”
“Over there,” he points. “Those stairs go to a basement. There’s a way out through there. We just have to hold them off long enough for the room to fill up with gas, then run out before it collapses.”
“How do you know we’ll make it?” I ask.
“I don’t . . . but I don’t think we have a choice,” he says.
The door to the room starts to shake as fists begin to pound like hammers on the other side. Lukas rushes over there. He piles anything he can find in front of it. An empty filing cabinet. A broken chair. Anything that might slow them down as I hurry to open the rest of the valves and pollute the air with the hissing sound of an explosive future.
The door isn’t the only way they try to get in. There’s a rumbling against every thin wall in the office. A drumming like the marching band during the football games. A steady rain of fists that threaten to break in. A threat they make good on once I see the first hand reach through the plaster.
Vacant eyes stare back at me, crazed with the taste for blood on their tongue. Another hand breaks through. Another pale face with deep blue veins pulsing as it reaches for me. Growling like an animal in a cage.
“LUKAS!” I scream.
“Go!” he yells, holding the door that has been opened a crack. Several arms push through the space between it and the wall. One of them wears the brown sleeve of a police officer. A sheriff’s stripes sewn onto the side.
“Not by myself!” I shout.
I’m not leaving him here.
I’m not leaving him to these animals.
He can tell I’m not going anywhere until he comes, too, so he pushes off the door and it swings open in a violent push. Lukas runs toward me, shoving me into motion. I look behind me as we get to the basement door. The sheriff is lumbering into the room with what looks like a hundred zombies right behind.
My sneakers splash through the water collected on the basement floor. I can see the glimmer of nightfall through a doorway ahead of me and keep running toward it as Lukas stays behind me. He’s trying to block the next door in their path, the last obstacle before they can pull our limbs apart. The only way in since even they can’t punch their way through cinder-block walls.
Lukas secures the dead bolt.
A click of safety that buys at least a few minutes.
“Come on, we’ll have to start the fire from outside,” he says.
He steps in front of me, steps up to our exit. The promise of freedom once he opens the door, only the door opens even before he is able to turn the handle. Opens from the outside where Maggie stands backlit like a monster from a child’s nightmare. A few streaks of her blond hair are all that’s visible outside the shadows.
“We didn’t finish, Madison,” she growls. “We’re not done until I say we’re done.” Her voice is distorted and ugly. When she turns her head into the light, I can see pink sores have spread across the porcelain skin of her face. I’ve noticed it with all of them. All the pretty cheerleaders turning into all the pretty zombies. I saw it with Greg, too, his boyish face more disfigured by the minute.
The more they need to feed, the more their beauty fades.
Another symptom of the death sickness.
Lukas charges at her. Attempts to knock her back and clear the way, but she doesn’t budge. When they collide, he’s the one who gets the worst of it. Her hands clutch his shoulders and even with the loud banging behind me I can hear the crunch of his bones, being crushed in her fists like a vise.
I bring my hands up to cover my face as she tosses him aside like throwing away a strangled puppy. “What do you want?” My words muffled as I speak into my hands. Scared and small and caught between sobs as I hear Lukas trying his best to handle the pain of broken bones with his silent screams.
“You can still have everything,” Maggie says with the splash of her feet moving toward me. “It will just take a second and then it’s over. You’ll be popular and beautiful forever.”
“Beautiful?” I shout. “Look at you! You’re not beautiful! None of you are beautiful!”
Her hands snatch at me. Strike like lightning and her fingers come up with a clump of my hair that hung down under my hat. She tugs harder and my neck bends back from the force as I fall to my knees in the filthy water.
“It will just take a second,” she growls. “You’ll barely feel it.”
Grabbing tighter, she stretches my skin until I’m forced to lean my neck back and stare up at her. I reach behind me to hold on to her wrist and keep her from ripping the scalp from my skull. Letting the pain escape through hurried breaths from my open mouth as the flutter of my heartbeat strains to keep up with my fear, pounding in rhythm with the blunt sound of fists beating against the metal door as those animals try to force their way in.
Maggie doesn’t need their help because I’m helpless against her.
Helpless to stop her from completing what she wants done to me.
I watch as she brings her other hand up to her neck and tilts her head to the side. Making her fingers like claws, she digs her nails deep into her pale skin. Pulls down violently like a razor, painting four red streaks that reach from behind her ear to the base of her neck. A trickle of blood leaking from each like worms from rotten meat.
“A few drops is all it takes to change you,” she says. “My blood will infect the rest of your blood. It will eat away at that pathetic girl you call Hannah. Erase her completely. Then you’ll become something more perfect, like us. Stronger. Prettier. Better.”
I shake my head but she pulls on my hair harder, snapping my head back like tugging on the strings of a puppet. I feel her breath on my face as she leans over me. Drops of blood drip from her wounds, inches from my face. I close my mouth, but Maggie cups my chin in her hand. Squeezing my cheeks until my teeth begin to shift and I have no choice but to open it again.
“Don’t be so nervous,” she says. “You’re going to like this. You’re finally going to have what you’ve always wanted. You’re going to be adored.”
I try to scream out but my jaw is locked in place by her fingers and my tongue cannot make a sound without me being able to move it.
Everything goes dark as her hair drapes across my face.
My lips brush against her cheek as her skin slides over them like a snake sliding over sand. I feel the bones in her cheek turn into the bones of her jaw. The hollow space before my lips touch again against her neck. And I hold my breath anticipating the warm taste of disease about to touch inside me . . . to kill me.
A quick swipe of created wi
nd stops everything.
The dull sound of metal meeting bone.
The blow travels down her spine and vibrates through her fingertips, passing from her body to mine as she releases me. Releases me too soon. Releases me while I’m still clean . . . while I’m still me.
I open my eyes and see Lukas standing behind her.
The heavy pipe in his hand is stained with the skid marks of bone and bleached hair. Swung with the last force left in the torn muscles of both his shoulders. Enough strength left to open a gash in the back of her head that keeps her from getting up.
New lines form in his face as he winces in pain, dropping the weapon into the still water around his ankles. I get up as quickly as I can. Rush over to him and wrap my hands around his waist to keep him from collapsing as his body goes numb.
I drag him through the stagnant water, resting at the small set of steps that lead out the open door where the world is new and white and safe as the snow that covers it. I crawl behind him and slip my arms under his the way rescuers do when they pull people from burning cars. And from one step to the next, I make his body move with mine toward safety.
But safety is farther than the touch of falling snow.
Safety isn’t as simple as a locked door bending under the pursuit of maddened flesh eaters. Safety doesn’t come with the fragments of bone split open to show us her skull. Because the undead don’t die the way they should. They don’t die until they are destroyed, until all the life is burned out of them. So Maggie gets to her feet before we’re able to get to wherever safe is.
I struggle to pull Lukas up the last step and through the door as Maggie drags herself through the grime. Injured but still dangerous, still deadly. Her eyes, rolled back in her head, still glow with a faint color of toxic rust. Teeth like razors when she flashes a smile. Grip like a snare trap when she digs her hands into Lukas’s ankles.
“You can watch me devour your friend,” she growls. “A little preview of what you’re soon going to enjoy.”