A howl of anger pierced the generalized din. They were nearly there.
“I hope none of you can climb.”
In moments he stood on the barrel and extended his arms.
He was about a foot below the edge.
“Please God, help me fly.” He echoed a prayer Grandma Marty had used in a previous tight scrape. He ran through that hailstorm of bullets in the Arch lobby and survived, but that seemed easy compared to the threat coming down on him at that moment.
He hopped a bit to test his plan. His balance on top of the barrel was precarious and his half-jump made the barrel wobble. It remained upright as he came back down, but now he was freaking out about his chances. One look at the front lawn said his window of survival was rapidly closing.
The zombies didn't run, but he was sure they saw him. Dozens headed right for him with their arms held out in the, “me want blood,” pose.
“One more time. This is for the final play of the Super Bowl.” He turned to his announcer voice. “It's fourth and long. Liam Peters has the ball. He needs a touchdown ... ” His voice trailed off as he looked up at the edge of the roof, visualizing what he needed to do.
Jump. Hold. Pull.
He squatted down and felt the barrel shift underneath him.
Why didn't I make sure it was stable?
So many variables. So little time.
He sprang with everything he had. The barrel held until the last instant, but then it moved and tipped.
It happened like a silent film in his head. He watched as his two hands reached upward and passed the chipped paint on the side of the roof's support. When they were positioned properly he attempted to grab the rough edge of the shingles. There was a very narrow channel along the edge-probably to prevent water from dumping on anyone walking onto the porch.
In his film, his fingers gripped that edging with a vise grip.
But the production wasn't totally silent. The dry wooden barrel made a crunch sound as it fell sideways on the rocks.
“Get up there!” he shouted to himself.
He pulled for a moment until he felt something touch his pant leg.
“Aww shit!” slipped out as he pulled his legs as high as he could.
An image popped in his head. Something he couldn't have shut out if he tried. A recent episode from his high school. An event he really didn't need to think about, involving his gym teacher recording stats for each student as part of a national fitness evaluation. There were many variables they chronicled including distance running, long jumping, and for whatever reason they wanted to know how long students could “plank.” But all that was secondary to his least favorite category on the chart: pull-ups.
He pretended to think about how many he could do back then, but it was only a stall for time. As a runner, most of his efforts focused on putting miles on his feet. The running categories he aced. But the pull ups? He couldn't do a single damned one of them.
5
“You can do it, boyfriend,” he said, mimicking Victoria's inspiring voice.
The shingles of the roof burned under his fingertips. Ignoring that was easy with the threat below. He used his feet to cheat on this all-important test of his physical strength. His dexterity allowed him to push up with the soles of his shoes on the corner pillar of the porch while pulling with his hands and arms. Together, he was able to shimmy himself part-way onto the roof. His bare arms were flush with the asphalt surface and it really burned!
“Yee-ow!”
He was either going to burn to death or get eaten. He used the pain on his arms to convince his muscles to get him over the edge by doing his one semi-legal pull-up. Liam shut his eyes and pulled with everything he had. Below him, there was almost certainly a zombie holding out his arms.
“Yes! Touchdown!” he screamed when he'd pushed himself up and onto the shingles. Only when none of his body was hanging over the side did he allow himself a breath. And even then, the heat of the roof forced him to his feet again. He stood up and waved his burning arms to cool them off, but also to see what he'd escaped.
It was like looking down on a herd of wildebeests from those films in class. The two-story house was tiny next to the horde and the dust storm swirling around the participants. In those few seconds of victory his head became light and the world swam in his vision.
Too little water.
Too little food.
Crap-tacular sleep for weeks on end.
The sweet syrupy stench of the infected.
That annoying ghost music again.
He had the good sense-in that last moment-to tilt himself away from the roof's edge.
When he woke up he knew he'd only been out for a few seconds because his face was plastered to the hot shingles, but it wasn't sizzling like bacon, yet.
“Aww man,” he screamed in pain. “Come on!”
He had to push up with his fleshy palms, forcing another yelp.
The zombies trampled over the front lawn and melted around both sides of the house like a hot lava flow. That first wave of nauseous gas faded away, but the dust kept getting worse.
It was impossible to look at each man and woman, but little things caught his eye. A woman in a bright yellow dress with a thick rope laced around her chest and arms, so they were pinned to her side. A heavy black woman wore her Sunday best, complete with a huge-brimmed black hat with peacock feathers poking out the sides. A teen boy, about his size and age, wearing a Mountain Dew t-shirt almost identical to the one he wore those first days of the disaster. Had that kid been playing video games on that last day, too?
He couldn't stand there a moment longer.
From where he stood, he could walk on the flat surface above the porch from one end to the other or climb to the topmost ridge of the house's roof. Getting up top might be useful at some point, he reasoned, but he made for the two windowed dormers close by. The white-framed windows of the second floor would get him off the fiery hot roof as well as get him out of view of the arriving horde.
The first one was already open. Without looking inside, he practically jumped through the frame to get out of the dust and hide from the horde.
A small sheetless bed sat along the long wall of the room but there wasn't much else being used in there. It appeared as if the room had been tilted so all the remaining contents slid into the corner. A disorganized pile of stuffed animals and children's clothes suggested the space was once owned by a kid.
He took a moment to calm himself. He'd just been thrown out of a house, separated from Victoria, almost caught by the zombies, and practically burned by the black tar shingles of the roof. He didn't have time to get his pistol, so now he had no weapon. That was a major handicap in the zombie apocalypse.
Liam gave the pile of junk a quick search but there was nothing close to a weapon, not even a chair he could bust to make a club, so he had to look elsewhere.
The door to the hallway was ajar so he continued deeper into the house. The floor was dried hardwood-like it hadn't been cared for in years. It occurred to him he could be squeaking with each step he took, alerting those below to his presence, but he dispelled that image by listening to the crowd outside. It was so loud now it had become a constant, suitably creepy, howl.
The floor vibrated with the energy of the zombie footfalls.
A hallway ran the length of the house and he counted four other doors on the upstairs level. One sad-looking carpet runner straddled the middle of the walkway from his end all the way to the steps down the hall, but otherwise there was very little in the way of décor. There were a couple of pictures on the wall, but his attention was drawn to the nearest. It was a small faded photograph of an older man and woman standing behind a large group of boys and girls. The kids wore jeans and pleated skirts and most of the boys wore cowboy hats. Though the photo seemed recent, it reminded him of Little House on the Prairie.
The woman in the photo didn't look like the shotgun momma downstairs, but he couldn't be sure. That reminded him of his
task, and he desperately wanted to find a weapon and rescue Victoria, so he left the picture and continued his search.
A water would be nice, too.
The door across the hall was open, so he peeked in. All the contents had been pushed to the far corner just like in the first room, except it also had a mattress on the floor.
A man sat alone on the filthy mattress to his left, but he faced the back window of the room. The man was older, with short gray hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in ages, and he wore a type of uniform Liam recognized.
“Hello, Father,” Liam said with a respectful tone.
The holy man slowly turned to him. “I'm a reverend, actually, my son.”
Liam walked in a few paces, expecting him to get up, but the man remained where he was. His white thingy on the front of his collar was filthy and out of place, like he'd been fooling with it over and over. He was dressed in a button-down black shirt and black pants exactly as Father Cahill, and other priests preferred when they weren't in the long robes of a formal service.
He held out his hand toward the guy, but he didn't reciprocate.
“Won't you sit a spell?” The man patted the disgusting mattress.
“No, I, uh, need to stay on my feet or I'll fall asleep,” he lied. “My name is ... Sam Stevens,” Liam lied again. He resolved to be anyone but Liam Peters right now. So many people seemed to know who and where he was-he needed a break from those issues. Whoever this priest was, he didn't need to know his real name.
“Sam. I'm Lucifer.”
The horrified look on Liam's face must have been what he'd intended, because the priest giggled. The sweat dripped from his forehead, around his bushy brown eyebrows, and onto his cheeks. Despite the sweltering heat, the sad-looking man had failed to open the rear window.
“Seriously?” Liam asked with a bit of fear in his voice.
“No,” the man continued with a soul-crushing sigh. “Not really. But I might as well be, you know?”
Liam had no idea what he was going on about, so he just shrugged.
The man pointed to the nearby window. Though they couldn't see the crowd below, the dust was almost thick enough to knock on the glass. The sky had darkened a little as the artificial storm blotted the sun.
Still on the mattress, the man looked up at him and appeared to straighten his collar and sit a little taller.
“My name is really Daniel. Somehow, my son, I've fallen so far I've become the lord of Hell.”
He imagined the zombie howls outside were laughing, now, and that sent a deep chill right down to his sweat-soaked bones.
6
“What d-did you say?” With the noise rattling the house, it was easy to pretend he didn't hear the soft-spoken man.
“There is no God with a capital G, you fool. That's what I'm saying!” A switch had been flipped. Daniel pounded the mattress one time with both his fists. “This place. These people. Those people,” he pointed outside. “Those are the damned. They are our future.”
“No. There's a cure, Father, uh, sir.”
Daniel wiped his sweaty face with both hands. “I'm a reverend! I'm a-” He froze, like he'd just remembered something. “I was a-”
With a lot of visible effort, Daniel rose from the bed and walked to the window.
“You see those people?” He pointed down to the zombies. “Each one died. Each one was supposed to see the face of god, like we've been told for thousands of years. The Bible says so. The church says so. Your mommy and daddy told you it was so, right?”
Liam nodded, mostly to be polite because his parents never put it quite in those terms.
“But the truth is that there's nothing beyond the veil. You just keep going-like them.” His head leaned against the glass as his voice faded. When he started again he gently tapped his forehead on the wooden frame. “I've seen them come out of the ground. Have you?”
He started to reply, but Daniel wasn't done.
“We buried the children. They died almost on the first day ... ” This time he sounded like he was crying as he spoke. “What do I know about burying people?” he said, louder. “It wasn't my fault, honest. It wasn't!”
“It wasn't your fault,” Liam offered in reply. Hoping it was what Daniel wanted to hear.
“Damn right. I didn't know any better. The holes were too shallow. So, the next day I came out to pray and the soulless shell reached out of the dirt and grabbed me.” He sniffled. “I think that's when I figured it out,” he said in his soft voice once more. “You know? You can see it, right?”
“Sure,” he replied as if testing the waters of agreement.
Daniel swiveled his head, so he could face him. “Are you saying I deserved it? Are you?”
He had no idea how to talk to the increasingly distraught man, so he just shrugged defensively.
“No, I guess you didn't.”
Daniel looked back outside.
“It proves God doesn't exist. These empty people are what we become when we die. God doesn't come down and take us to Heaven,” he said in an accusatory declaration to the zombies outside. “And if there is no God, it doesn't matter what we do here.” He swept his arm back in the room, though he remained facing the zombies. “It doesn't matter.”
Was it smart to argue with an unhinged priest, he wondered. What could he gain? He looked around the room, again in search of something he could use to rescue Victoria, but it had been stripped of anything remotely useful in that department.
What the hell?
The last thing he expected to see was a knife on the child's mattress. Daniel had been sitting on it but left it there when he went to the window.
“So, you lost faith in God?” He stepped backward, putting a little distance from Daniel.
“You could say that,” he said with great weight. “Or you could say I reveled in the release it gave me. I don't know why I behaved that way ... was I always a bad person?”
“What do you mean?” he said evenly. He was soon closer to the bed than Daniel.
“I was a rich man. My flock was far from wealthy-mostly farmers and river rats-but they believed. Oh, did they. Each Sunday they would throw their money at me and beg me to help God forgive their sins. As if that was what God wanted.” He laughed, and not in a funny way. “The joke's on them!”
Liam stood in front of the bed, next to the knife.
“And it was on me. I was a sinner, too.” He turned to where Liam had been previously. He reoriented on his new position, seemingly oblivious to the shift. “I was the biggest sinner; do you know why?”
He shook his head emphatically.
Daniel's face was dark and brooding under his sheen of sweat and his clothes appeared saturated as if he'd run through a sprinkler. Liam hoped he'd at least open a window since he was right there, but he seemed disinterested in his own condition.
“I knew God didn't exist, all along.” This time he cackled like a hyena. “I knew!”
Liam continued to shake his head without committing himself to a reply. Daniel was becoming unstable the more they talked, and he found it hard to know what answers the man wanted to hear.
If he comes for me, I'll grab the knife.
“You don't understand. How could you? You are still a child. But let me ask you a question that will help color it in for you. If God existed, do you think clergymen around the world would abuse little children? Do you think they would advocate stoning women? Do you think they would pocket money from their flocks? Do you? Are these not major, damning sins? And yet we do them without stop.”
Liam's head bobbed as a way of responding to those questions, rather than press him to explain himself some more. It seemed dangerous to do anything but show support.
“Prostitutes. Boys. Preying on the weak. The stupid. Stealing innocence. Do you think a true man of God would do those things?”
More head shaking, though it dawned on Liam he was listening to a confession of sorts. His pity was shifting toward something else.
Daniel noticed the knife again and his eyes widened almost comically. Liam reached down to pick it up, but the man wasn't bothered.
“The knife wasn't for you, my child.”
“Don't call me that. I'm not a kid. Not anymore.” Now that he had the knife, his fear abated. “It wasn't for you, either. Was it? Was it!”
Liam felt his anger behind his eyes and he wouldn't have been surprised if steam came off his head.
The priest's eyes betrayed him.
“I told you the truth. I'm Lucifer. I'm the Evil One. I just can't stop myself.”
“You are a priest dammit. You should know there can't be evil without good. If you're Lucifer, there has to be a God. They have to balance.”
Though he had no time to dwell on it, he admitted his response was as much from reading zombie books as it was from any religious dealings in his life. Though Grandma Marty could undoubtedly argue religion all day long with this guy, his beliefs were more along the lines of how the universe balanced itself. If there was only evil, nothing could ever get done. Absolute evil was pure chaos. A thrashing mosh pit of devils could not cure Cancer, put a man on the Moon, or come together as a community to fight off a horde of zombies.
“And I suppose you are claiming the mantle of God?” Daniel boomed as if Liam had done something unspeakable. “Have you no sin?”
How would Grandma answer this?
“There are always choices. In this hand-” he held out his left, with the knife, “-is evil. And in this one, good. When I think of what you've done, I put you in this hand.” He held up the knife. “You had a choice to hurt your victims, and you gave yourself permission. That wasn't God or the devil. That was you. I'm not a great person, but I am a good one. If that fact gives me some God cred over you-a man supposed to know better-then so be it. But if you hurt another human being, I will not hesitate to kill you.”
She would have done that better.
“Could you kill a man?”
He thought of Elsa, knowing without question he could. Daniel must have saw it in his eyes.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 178