KC
I want to help Jesse. I want to help Mom and Houston and I want to help myself, but I can’t. I can’t because I’m stuck too. I’ve stepped in something that fractured under my shoe and gave way to something squishy and gooey. I try to pull my foot out, but whatever it is, it acts like a cage. I train my flashlight onto it to see what’s caught me fast.
I look down at something that looks back up at me and I realize that my foot is caught in a cage—a ribcage. The zombie’s bits and pieces are too rotted to hold it together anymore and keep it upright, but I know the infection trapped in its useless body will get to me the second I take my boot off.
Houston stands like a deer in headlights, gently swaying and staring into some distant, unimaginable point. Why won’t he wake up? He’s strong enough to pull me and Mom out of the bodies we’ve stepped through and he can scoop Jesse off the ground and throw her over his shoulder. At least Jesse doesn’t have her foot caught in a dead man’s chest. Why doesn’t she just get off her whiney butt and stop screaming, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”?
There’s a sick gelatinous pop followed by a crack as she finally pulls herself off the ground—with a head firmly attached to her arm by its teeth.
I look back beyond Mom, who’s trying to walk while still attached to her zombie. It would look funny if we weren’t about to die because she’s trying to move like she’s got nothing more than a macabre snowshoe on her foot. The less-dead are right behind her, a steadily advancing wall of hunger with arms stretched out to pull her in to their teeth. “She’s done for.” I numbly think. “And I’m next.”
Just as I finish that thought, I feel a pair of arms encircling me and squeezing. I join Jesse’s screams as I flail around trying to dislodge my attacker: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” I scream helplessly. My attacker pulls me free of the body on the ground and whirls me around. I inhale sharply as I catch sight of it.
It’s a ghost. And it says, “You won’t have to if you come with me.”
RENEE
I’m losing it. I’m looking at Houston in his catatonic state, I’m looking at a parasite’s head chomping down on Jesse’s arm, and now I’m looking at KC being bear-hugged from behind by the only ghoul not covered in mud. I’m ready to sink down and join the bodies below me, but then the zombie speaks. He mumbles something to KC before I hear “…come with me.”
I stop panicking. He has set KC free from the rib cage and then turns to Jesse. He pries the skull off of her arm and drop kicks it like a football. He takes Jesse by one gloved hand and with the other pushes an advancing parasite away from Houston by its skull. He shoves it hard enough to knock it on its backside and as he pushes it, the well-rotted skin and hair slide right off its skull in almost one piece. “Dude!” I hear KC yell. “You scalped him with your bare hand!”
I can think clearly now. I turn around and take out the five corpses nearest me with my gun. I shake off the torso that was trapping me and turn back to face our pale hero. He places a long stout stick in my hand. His matter-of-fact tone informs me to “Form a chain. Use this pole to push the dead away. I’ll take the front, you take the rear. The little one walks in front of you, the girl in front of her. She can push the tall one while I pull him behind me. Be as quiet as possible.”
We obey. I hardly have time to feel amused at taking orders from what appears to be a kid no older than KC. We lurch and reel through the smoke, blindly swinging our sticks around until we come in contact with something and then forcefully pushing that something away. We zig and zag until I truly have no idea where we could be.
Then I hear the groan of a heavy door opening and feel a rigid floor beneath my feet. Something solid and familiar dashes past my legs, followed by the slam of the door. It’s too dark to see, I have no idea where we are, but I’m too wrung out to care. I’ve given all my trust over to our phantasmal guide.
I hear various locks click into place. My eyes strain against the dark, searching for anything to focus on. I catch sight of a window and see a flicker of flames reflected in it. I make my way towards it, hoping it will help me get my bearings. I put my face up against the net curtains and look out.
I’m looking across the street at the blazing mass that was once our home.
I’m at Eric’s.
HOUSTON
The first thing I’m aware of is Naked licking my face. I can’t feel the heat anymore and it’s quiet. It’s musty, and my lungs are still burning, but at least I can breathe.
It’s also cold and dark. Where am I? Am I alone? I will myself to open my sore eyes, but they refuse to work, afraid of what they might see. I feel something warm stir next to me and reach out my hand, touching Jesse’s tangled hair. If she’s warm she’s alive. If she’s alive, we must be OK.
How are we OK?
I open my swollen eyes a bit and wait for them to adjust to the dark. The first things I can make out are glints of sunlight that struggle to get through several layers of net curtain. A figure stands out in stark silhouette, hands in pockets, absorbed with whatever is happening on the other side of that curtain. I look around me. Jess is sleeping deeply, curled up, as comfortable as if she was in her own bed. Perhaps she’s so exhausted she doesn’t know where she is. KC’s next to her, sleeping fitfully. Mom lies beside KC. She’s so alarmingly still, I draw closer to her to make sure she’s breathing. I relax when I see her inhale. She’s seems to be more comatose than sleeping.
I start to notice things, like the fact that none of us are wearing our raingear or boots. I also notice that Jesse has angry red welts on her arm, a crescent full of dashes like an obscene smile. I gasp involuntarily. She was bitten! She was bitten, but her skin has not been broken. Thank heavens for good-quality raincoats and thank heavens for overprotective mothers.
A thin, raspy voice startles me. “I had to salt-wash your boots and coats, they were covered in parasite fluids.” The dark figure at the window sounds like he’s sick. Either that or he hasn’t used his voice in a long time.
“Thanks. I owe you. I doubt I was any help in getting here.” Where is here? I join our champion at the window and take in the view. What I see makes me feel lightheaded and queasy. It’s a sight that is all wrong—there’s a smoldering gap in the Earth where my home used to be and countless zombies casually strolling around in the ashes. It’s hard to picture where my room was or if anything survived with all the Infected wandering around it. Wait a minute...Naked! Where is Naked? I feel a tear fall before I even complete the thought of losing our dog.
“She’s right here.” This guy’s spooky. It feels like he’s reading my mind. Sure enough, Naked is there by his side, licking his hand like he’s her new best friend. I feel a jab of jealousy quickly followed by guilt—if he saved her life he deserves to be her new best friend. “She must have followed us in through the smoke,” he continues. “She dashed into the house as soon as I opened the door.”
We go back to looking outside the window. The parasites’ numbers have increased, and not just by the looters. I have never seen so many zombies in one place in real life. The strains of Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” start to play in my mind.
What’s drawn them here? Did they come from far and wide when they saw the fire? Why are they sticking around? There are obviously no more victims to bite. Then I remember how many there were in the first place and wonder how long they’ve been waiting in the bushes around the house.
“Have you ever seen this many zombies before?” I asked my quiet colleague. “We didn’t know there were more than the ones in the garage. They blended in so well in the bushes.”
“They’ve been silently assembling for the past three weeks. They’ve learned to blend in. I’ve watched them roll around in the mud a few times before they started hiding in the bushes.”
“From this window?” I ask.
“From all the windows. We have telescopes on all sides.”
By “we” he must mean him
and old man Eric. I’m about to ask him where Eric is, but drop it when I hear movement behind me. It’s my mother, and she’s joined us at the window. She probably doesn’t want Jess and KC to wake up because she whispers instead of talks. “When you say ‘we,’ do you mean you and Eric?”
“Yes.” I like this guy. He’s not much for words…like me.
The sound of muted steps behind us announce KC’s arrival. “So you’re Jesse’s ghost. What’s your real name?”
He sighs. He doesn’t answer for what feels like an eternity. “I don’t like my name. It was an old name to go with an old life that I’ll never get back. I like ‘Ghost.’ Yeah, that works, just call me Ghost.”
My mother looks troubled at this, but I don’t think she’s going to argue with the kid who saved our lives. She doesn’t press for his real name, but instead asks “How old are you? Where did you come from? How did you come to live with Eric? Where is Eric?”
Ghost inhales deeply in preparation for all the answers. “I’m sixteen. I used to live in Laurel, Maryland. When we were evacuated from school, I was taken home like everyone else. I thought I would meet my family there. They didn’t answer their cell phones, and no one contacted me. Three days later a couple of soldiers from Homeland Security knocked on my door. They asked me to pack my bags and come with them. They wouldn’t answer any questions about my family, but I could guess what happened to them from the sympathy I saw in their eyes. Without any notice, I was taken to my estranged grandfather.”
“Eric.” I understand now. Naked didn’t bark Ghost’s arrival because Eric knew him and he was not a threat.
“Yes, Eric. I felt I was being a traitor to my mother at first. After all, she must have had a good reason why she broke off contact with him. Eric never explained why my mother wouldn’t talk to him, and after a while I didn’t care. He was kind, and he was all I had in the world.”
“Was that Eric who was taken away by the Pickup Truck?” my mother asks softly.
Ghost falls quiet again. My mother goes on to fill the silence. “I’m so sorry about your family. I wish you didn’t have to suffer such loss and loneliness. Please know that we’ll always be here for you.”
Wow, Mom, that sounds really trite. Ghost doesn’t respond. He just keeps staring out the window. It’s now that I realize that KC has joined us. She’s breathing funny. I look over at her face flushed in anger, her nostrils flared, her breathing hissing through clenched teeth. I follow her gaze to what is left of our home, and now I’m reading minds too. I can feel her thoughts as she narrows her eyes at the zombies formally known as the looters. Yesterday we had a safe and secure home. It was a home that allowed us privacy. A home that held our memories. Our pictures. Our books. All gone because of some greedy heartless hillbillies.
“Mom,” says KC, her voice even and forced. “Can I shoot them now?”
JESSE
Ha! They think I’m sleeping. See, I can be quiet when I want to be! And I think Ghost is a cool name. I also think I should get full credit for it.
I like Ghost. He brought us to the mysterious house across the street. I haven’t been to old man Eric’s home since we sang carols to him last Christmas, and then it was crammed full of old people nick-knacks on doilies. “Dust-catchers” my mother called them. It’s not like that now.
I remember when we got in last night, it was totally dark and my eyes were burning so much from that smoke I couldn’t see anything. I heard a door close behind us, and I heard my ghost say “You’re safe now.” Then I heard a thud as someone hit the floor. “Mom?” I asked. “KC? Houston?”
Ghost’s voice was reassuring in the dark. “They’re in shock. They’ll be fine after a little sleep; your mother’s just collapsed and your brother and sister have joined her.” That made sense. They probably felt it was safe enough to take a nap. I felt safe too. I didn’t know where I was and I didn’t really know Ghost, but I could tell that I could trust him. I mean, he saved us! And he stopped that zombie from biting me more!
I started crying at the thought of that biting head. “My arm hurts.”
Ghost spoke like he understood. “I’m sure it does, that parasite had a good grip on you.”
“Why am I not dead?”
“Because of your raincoat. Your mother invested in some pretty thick vinyl there. Can you take it off for me? I need to wash it in saltwater.”
“Because it has zombie spit on it?”
“Something like that.”
I needed help getting my raincoat on in the first place, and I needed help getting it off too. But once it was off I felt like I really was safe, and once I realized I was safe, I realized that I was super tired. Not “it’s late” tired, but tired in my head and body. Even my eyeballs were tired. I felt around in the dark for someone, found Houston, found Naked, and then soon found myself asleep.
Now that I’m awake I can feel my arm again. I’ve got these dashes on it, like the ones you see down the middle of the road. I bet the dashes don’t hurt the road as much as they hurt me. I look around now that it’s light enough to see and I gasp.
“Cooooool,” I exhale.
KC
Oh great, Jesse’s up. I turn around to shush her and am interrupted by the sight of Eric’s house in the filtered sunlight.
This is not the Old Man Eric’s house I knew from Christmas.
Gone are the little figurines in their dusty mirrored cabinets. Gone are the cabinets, and the fringed tablecloths, the salmon pink shag carpet, the dusky pink velvet furniture…
…and gone are the stairs.
Seriously, the stairs are gone. How do you get rid of stairs?! It’s as if someone took an axe to them, but that would take forever! Whoever got rid of them did a thorough job, now there’s only an eye-hook on each level and a knotted gym rope connecting one floor to the next.
Ghost shifts his gaze away from the window to share our view. “Eric figured it would be almost impossible for a zombie to climb a gym rope.”
“Where’s the rest of his stuff?”
“Barricading the windows and doors. This was the easiest door to access last night, so I cleared the furniture away and then when you were all inside, I moved it all back.” I’m seriously impressed. Ghost meets my gaze then quickly looks away. “We should move upstairs,” he mumbles. Brilliant! I get to try out the rope!
We toss our backpacks up to the top floor and shimmy up the rope like cockroaches. Mom is clearly worried about Jesse dropping to the unseen basement below, but she’s had lots of experience at rope climbing in elementary school and scrambles up faster than the rest of us. I’m grateful she’s alive after seeing that head attached to her arm, but I still find her annoying as she keeps repeating “See! I told you I saw something at Eric’s window! I was right! You should listen to me more often! I told you I saw a ghost!”
“He’s not a ghost, Jess,” I interrupt.
“He is now.”
“That’s just his nickname,” I start, but I’m too absorbed in our surroundings to fight with my little sister, so I go with “Oh…never mind.” It’s still hard to see in the muted light, but I’m sure I saw her stick her tongue out at me.
I’m trying to take everything in as Ghost leads us down the hallway. He invites us to take a rigged salt-water shower, which we all do. I think I’m taking longer than everyone else because I won’t feel myself again till all the soot from last night is washed away. I stand under the showerhead and scrub like I can wash away the memories too. It doesn’t work.
When I get out Ghost reminds us not to part the curtains, just look through the nets or telescopes. “How do you see at night if you haven’t got any lights?” I ask.
“Night vision goggles.”
“Wow!” My mom whistles. “I thought I had the best survival kit! I’ve met my match with Eric.” She looks at Ghost thoughtfully. “It looks like he did a good job of preparing you for anything and everything.”
“He was very…protective. He knew he wasn’t goin
g to be around for long. He didn’t want me to be vulnerable to attack once he was gone.”
“How did he die?” Jess rudely asks.
Ghost doesn’t seem to be offended by her question. “He died of old age, I guess. I woke up one morning and he was gone.” Houston and I both give Jess a harsh look that says, “Don’t say another word.” She seems to get it because she goes quiet, but just for a moment. “Now what do we do?” she asks. “Can we explore your house more? What about that tunnel at the end of the hall? I remember old man Eric showing it to me and telling me it was a laundry chute, but now its opening is bigger, like you could throw a garbage can full of laundry down it!”
“Please don’t go near that. You could easily get hurt. You’ll find out what’s it’s for later. I think the best thing you can do is catch up on your sleep for now,” Ghost insists.
“What? I’m not tired! It’s too light for bedtime. What else can I do but explore before it gets too dark to see again? Houston and KC and Mom get to look out of your telescopes and windows, but none of you will let me see what’s going on out there. You can’t tell me to read a book or play a game in this light either.”
I remember the rage I felt as I watched the cause of all our troubles staggering around in the charcoal remains of my home. “Trust me Jess,” I tell her. “There’s nothing out there you’d want to see.”
“Patience, sweetheart,” Mom pleads. “We have time to learn all we need to know about this place.”
Ghost speaks up. “I’m afraid you won’t. I don’t see us being here for too long.”
“Why not?” says Houston. He sounds irritated. “This place is safer than ours was! The looters are taken care of, nothing can get inside or up the stairs, and I’ve seen cupboards full of food and water! Why would anyone in their right mind leave?!”
Notes from a Necrophobe Page 7