We Are All Dead

by Jimmy Bird

  Seeing the blood, guts, and death was too much for him. He started to hyperventilate and feel sick, he needed some air. Forgetting his feeling of impending doom, he rushed out of the room.

  Once he was outside the bedroom, he took a deep breath to calm himself. Once he was calm enough, he heard a noise coming from the direction of his bedroom. Momentarily forgetting about what he had just seen, he looked around once more. He was curious on why he hadn’t heard the noise before and made his way towards his bedroom. He snuck down the hallway until he saw it, his first zombie. It was worse than he could have ever imagined. It was his own daughter.

  He watched as his daughter inexplicably banged on his bedroom door. He tried to stay quiet as he observed his daughter's unusual behavior. She wasn’t even talking. She just grunted something intangible as she banged away.

  He thought about asking her what she was doing but that bad feeling told him not too. So, he stood there as quiet as a mouse and just watched. He was trying to figure out what was going on. He wanted to know why she was trying so hard to get in his bedroom. That was when he noticed a noise he hadn’t notice before, it could have been because of all the banging. But the noise was definitely there.

  At first it was hard to hear, but the more he concentrated, the louder it became. He heard a childish crying and could hear his wife's voice pleading with that person to remain quiet. He figured that it was his grandson she was trying to calm down.

  He took a step forward causing the floor to make a creaking noise that seemed to echo through the hallway towards his daughter. She stopped banging on the door as she looked around searching for the source of the noise. That bad feeling returned causing him to retreat.

  Ruff had slowly backed up around the corner to observe his daughter and her strange behavior once again. It was only when she turned her head from side to side that he saw it. Part of the right side of her face had been ripped open. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then noticed something even more frightening that caused him to freeze in place. He saw a certain look in her eyes, a look that he had only seen on certain wild animals on television. He knew right then that his daughter was no more.

  Grief hit him like a ton of bricks at the sight of his daughter. Tears slowly ran down the side of his face as he silently mourned her. That was until he heard his grandson crying again. He knew that his grandson and wife needed him. His protective instincts kicked in. The question that remained was. How was he going to save them?

  It was only after his daughter turned to face the door again that an idea popped into his head. With a renewed determination to save his grandson and wife, he slowly backed away from the hallway and made his way toward the garage.

  Once he was safely inside his garage, he looked around for a noiseless weapon. At first glance around the room he didn’t find anything that would be considered useful. His eyes landed on his toolbox and thought that he might have something useful in there, maybe a hammer.

  He opened the lid but found no hammer. He continued to search through his multi-shelf toolbox but couldn’t find it. So, where was his hammer?

  He glanced around the room looking for his misplaced hammer until he came across one of his daughter’s old toys. It all came flooding back to him. His daughter had borrowed it a few weeks earlier and forgot to bring it back. He closed his eyes and sighed. He needed to find another weapon.

  He continued to look around when another long silent object popped into his head. What about his tire iron? He thought about it for a second and realized that it was outside in the hidden tire compartment of his SUV. The biggest issue now was that he didn’t know how safe it was outside. Now that he knew about the zombies, he didn’t know how many might have accumulated outside since he arrived.

  After thinking about it, he figured that his safest way to find a weapon was to keep searching inside the garage. So, he continued to quietly search until he came across an item that he had completely forgotten about. A machete! He had bought it a few years back for our camping exercises. Now it was going to be used to save his grandson’s life.

  With his machete out in front of him, he slowly made his way back towards the hallway that led to his bedroom. Before he turned the corner to the hallway, he stopped and listened. Ruff realized that he couldn’t hear anything, no banging or crying. He assumed the worst had happened and blamed himself for not acting quicker.

  He must have been so occupied with looking for a weapon that he might have missed the opportunity to save his grandson and wife. Without thinking, Ruff turned the corner and quickened his pace down the hall. He found his daughter still standing in the same spot, but something was different.

  To him it looked as if she was standing there examining the door trying to figure another way in. At the sight of his daughter, he slowed down his pace but continued to ease his way closer to her. She must have been able to sense him because she quickly turned around and lunged. Ruff immediately stopped dead in his tracks and began to backpedal.

  He gave ground as he tried to reason with her. He tried to talk as smooth and calmly as he could. He hoped that his little girl was still somewhere inside the monster that was coming at him. But nothing he tried seemed to work. It was proving to be a pointless effort.

  She moved faster than he thought, faster than most zombie movies portrayed them to be. The closer she got, the clearer the damage that she had endured became. He noticed that not only was the right side of her face damaged, but her right arm was also chewed up. It was hard to tell about all the cuts on her arms but to him, they looked like defensive wounds. His first thought was that she had tried to fight off that dead person he found with his dogs. It would’ve allowed her mom to take her one-year old son towards the safety of the bedroom.

  Ruff felt pride, loss, and fear at the exact same time. Pride because his daughter sacrificed herself to save her son and mom. Loss because of the obvious loss of his daughter. Finally, he felt fear because he knew that fear was going to be the key to surviving.

  He continued to backpedal as fast as he could, but she quickly caught up to him. When she was within arm’s length, he finally realized that there was no reasoning with her. As she reached out to grab his shoulder, he instinctively tried to jump backwards. He had been so focused on his daughter that he didn’t pay attention to where he was.

  He ended up in his living room and as he tried to jump away from her, he had ended up doing a back-flip over his recliner. Well, rolling backwards over it anyway. He accidentally dropped his machete as he tried to roll into a defensive position. Ruff quickly realized that it wouldn’t of mattered if he had his machete or not because she was already on top of him before he even had a chance to finish his roll.

  She had lunged at him with both arms outstretched. On the next part of his story I would have called him lucky, but Ruff would have called it skill. Either way, he had successfully grabbed both of her outstretched arms with both of his hands and fought with everything he had just to hold her away from him. She tried to lean forward towards his face as her mouth chomped up and down. He tried to hold her arms in such an angle that would have held a normal person back. It was such an uncomfortable position that it would be impossible for her to bite him.

  He managed to hold her at bay but knew that he was going to have to come up with another plan quickly. His arms started to get tired because she kept pushing her weight into him. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold her for too much longer. As he was fighting her, a thought popped into his head, it wasn’t a good thought either. He realized that he was getting tired while it appeared that she wasn’t. After a quick analyst, he determined that her basic need to eat was pushing her and she had just found herself an all you can eat Ruff buffet.

  Ruff looked around for something to help him when he noticed his machete lying at his daughter’s feet. He knew that he couldn’t hold her off and reach for the weapon at the same time, so he pushed her backwards as hard as he could. She went flying backwards over his topped over
recliner.

  He immediately reached for his machete, but by the time he was able to grab the hilt, she had already regained her balance and was coming around his chair towards him again. Amazed at her recovery time, he quickly tried to stand up to better defend himself.

  By the time it took for him to stand up, she was already there with her arms outstretched again. When he saw the predatory hunger look in her eyes, his instincts told him to run. He described it as a wild, trapped, starving feral animal that wanted nothing more than to eat you. Hell, he shamefully admitted that he wanted to run away as the strange feeling of fear gripped him. It was a fear that he had never felt before.

  It was that feeling of helplessness that caused him to swing his machete as fast and as hard as he could towards her face. He wasn’t trying to hurt her but scare her into backing off. It didn’t work because he connected with such force that her head came clean off at the neck.

  Blood sprayed everywhere, including on him as her head went rolling around on the ground. He described it as an outside rolling water sprinkler of blood until it stopped on its side. He watched, stunned as her headless body continued to twitch as it dropped to the floor.

  Sadness overwhelmed him as his guilt kicked in, causing him to drop the long knife. His body was unable to support him any longer as his adrenaline that he didn’t know he was using, suddenly disappeared. With tears in his eyes, he dropped to the floor next to her body. Memories flooded his mind as he looked at the thing that used to be his daughter. She was the same little girl that he had raised into the woman she had just been that morning.

  He sat there shocked at what he had just done. His shock quickly turned to guilt which turned to anger. How could he have killed his little girl? His gaze followed the blood splatter from her body to her head.

  Luckily, her head was facing away from him. Ruff closed his eyes and silently apologized to his daughter as he asked her to forgive him. When he was finished, he opened his eyes and looked at her head again. He knew that he needed to get his wife and grandson and leave. With one last sigh, he began to get up and stopped.

  Movement! He froze in place as he thought he saw movement from his daughter’s head. How can that be? He studied her head but saw no more movement. No, his eyes must have been playing tricks on him.

  He began to turn around when he saw movement once again. Were his eyes still playing tricks on him? He stared at the head for a long second and once again, nothing. He started to question his sanity when it moved again. It was only a slight movement and just around the jaw area, but it moved.

  Fear gripped him as he fell backwards. Why was her head moving? That was impossible, wasn’t it? After all, he had cut her head off. He thought about it. Maybe it was one of those ‘last death’ movements that a body can do when it dies like he had heard. Regardless of the reason, he had to know why.

  He slowly crawled towards his daughter’s moving head. Once he reached it, he leaned over to see what was going on. What he saw, caused him to jump backwards in horror. It was worse than he could have ever imagined.

  His daughter’s head was still alive. Her eyes were still alert and looking around but that predatory look in her eyes was gone. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish that’s out of water does. Out of curiosity, Ruff glanced over at her body. Luckily, it was still motionless.

  He knew that he couldn’t leave his daughter’s head like that. He leaned back towards his daughter’s headless body. He slowly reached out and picked up his machete with his suddenly shaking right hand.

  He gripped the handle with both hands as he leaned back over his daughter’s head. He closed his eyes as he lowered the knife. He stopped himself as soon as he felt the tip touch her skin. He opened his eyes and could still see her lowered jaw moving. Not able to watch what he was going to do, he closed his eyes again and pushed the knife down.

  It didn’t take as much force to push the knife through her head as he thought it would and when he tried to pull it out, something felt wrong. It felt as if the knife didn’t want to come free from the head. Ruff opened his eyes to verify what he thought might have happened and it did. His machete was indeed stuck in her temple. The only positive thing to happen was that the head had stopped moving.

  Afraid to touch the head, Ruff tried to shake it from his weapon, but it wouldn’t come off. Frantic, he began to shake it even harder. Finally, he decided to flick hit wrist as he shook it up and down.

  He succeeded in getting the head to come off, but it hit the hallway wall. It hit with such a force that it made a loud banging sound. Blood splattered all around the area where it had hit. Feeling guilty for everything that had happened to his daughter, Ruff once again dropped to his knees.

  He was quickly brought back from his grief when he heard a banging sound coming from the front door. He slowly got up and went to see who was at the front door. He carefully looked through the little peep hole and was surprised by what he saw. He realized that his little fight with his daughter, not to mention the noise of her head hitting the wall must have drawn some unwanted attention. There were more ten zombies just outside of his front door.

  Without making a sound, he turned and ran towards the bedroom. He stopped just before he got to the door and reached for the doorknob. To his surprise, he discovered that the door was still locked. After thinking about it, he wasn’t surprised at all. He softly called out his wife’s name to let her know that it was safe to come out.

  After a few minutes of him pleading, she unlocked the door and cracked it open. She took a quick peep around the door frame to make sure that the coast was clear. What she saw must have frightened her because she quickly slammed the door shut. Perplexed, he quietly called out her name again. He tried to reassure her that everything was alright. She responded that he was covered in blood. With all that had happened, he had forgotten that he was covered in their daughter’s blood.

  He tried once again to reassure her that he wasn’t hurt, that he was just covered in blood. Ruff could hear his grandson cry for him in the background which must have triggered something in his wife. She once again cracked open the door and peeped around the door frame. She asked him to turn around. After a quick visual inspection, she realized that he had no bite marks.

  She slowly opened the door and motioned for Ruff to hurry up inside. Once he was safely inside the bedroom, she quickly shut the door behind him. She didn’t miss a beat as she began looking him over again. As she was finishing up, she asked him about their daughter.

  He sighed heavily as his eyes turned downward to avoid the subject. He didn’t have the nerve to tell his wife what happened, instead he would show her. With tears in his eyes, he opened the door to the hallway. After a few seconds of looking, she spotted their daughters shoes lying just off the hallway facing towards the living room. Her shock caused her hand to automatically rise to cover her mouth.

  Ruff sighed heavily as he turned back to face his wife. Even though she wasn’t a physical type of person, he was expecting her to hit him out of anger for hurting their little girl. Instead, she was already gathering up their clothes. Confused, he looked from her to their grandson and back again. She never looked up at him as she stated that she wasn’t really surprised by what happened. Especially, after seeing their daughter in the zombie state that she was in.

  She turned and handed Ruff a bathroom towel. She told him to wash up and change for their grandson’s sake. At the thought of his grandson, Ruff’s eyes darted downward. He noticed that for the first time that his grandson wasn’t crying. Instead, his grandson was staring up at him as he asked “Mama?” repeatedly.

  It broke Ruff's heart as he knelt down and hugged his grandson. He told him that his mama got sick and had to leave. He then told his grandson that they had to go to a safe place where nobody was sick. Ruff silently vowed that one day, he would explain what that meant. He then looked up at his wife and saw tears in her eyes for the first time.

  Ruff immediately stood up and took a s
tep toward his wife to comfort her, but she had already started wiping her tears away with her hands. She told him to hurry and clean up, so they could leave. Ruff looked down and realized that he was still holding the towel.

  As he cleaned up in the bathroom, Ruff asked his wife what had happened. She didn’t answer. He looked up and noticed that she was just looking at him. The look she gave him said it all, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  When she did speak, she told him that their daughter was doing her weekly visit when there was a knock at the door. No, it was more like banging on the door. Their daughter got up to answer it when the door flew open and a woman attacked her. Their daughter fought back. The fight made it to the spare bedroom where their dogs tried to protect their daughter. His wife told him that there was a lot of yelping from the dogs right after that.

  She grabbed their crying grandson and her phone. She tried calling 911, but the line was busy. Before she could hang up the phone, their daughter had emerged from the bedroom. She had blood coming from the right side of her face and arm. His wife’s nursing instincts kicked in, causing her to spring into action. She sat down their grandson in a chair and turned to get some towels when she noticed that their daughter collapsed to the floor.

  Forgetting the towels, she ran to her collapsed daughter. She was very weak and had started wheezing. His wife had picked up the phone again to call 911 when their daughter suddenly died. All she got was another busy signal. Her despair quickly turned to anger over what happened to their daughter and for the lack of help from the emergency line.

  Just then Ruff’s wife heard her grandson cry out and all the built-up anger instantly melted away as she got up to comfort him. She picked him up and was going to take him out of the room until she could do something with the body (she didn’t want him to see his mom like that). She started to turn to walk away whenever she heard a moaning sound behind her. Unsure of the sound, she stopped and turned towards the noise. She was silently hoping that she had been mistaken about her daughter.