by Jimmy Bird
The guy’s eyes took on a sympathetic look, “Your friend was tired and had to lay down for a nap.”
Artie wasn’t buying it, “James? Are you there?”
Unfortunately, all he received was silence.
Worried, Artie demanded, “Where’s my friend?”
The guy shrugged, “I guess that you’ll just have to go find out.”
The guy dropped the rag on the ground and began walking towards Artie. He began pulling something out of his right back pocket. Artie could see a reflection from the sun on a long and narrow object in the guy’s left hand. He noticed for the first time that the guy hadn’t been wiping his hands at all but a knife. He also saw something new that looked like a handgun in his right hand.
Artie turned to run just as someone emerged from the hallway door. He noticed that it looked like an older version of the woman from the living room pictures, armed with a shotgun. She was visibly shaking.
Artie ran past her on his way towards the kitchen. She tried to aim the gun at him but wasn’t fast enough. As he raced past her, he noticed that the hallway door wasn’t a closet door as he had first assumed. It looked like it went down toward a dark basement or at least another dark room.
Artie didn’t have time to dwell on the matter as he raced to find his friend. He knew that he could reach the stairs through the kitchen. He turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The guy had cut him off.
Artie aimed his gun at the guy but didn’t shoot. He knew that the noise would attract zombies to the house which would make it even harder to leave. No, he didn’t need to be trapped in the house with these psychopaths.
He slowly backed up until he heard something that sounded like a footstep creak up behind him. He froze as a chill ran down his spine. He had forgotten all about the woman. He was stuck between the proverbial ‘rock and a hard place.’
He didn’t dare turn his back on the guy, but he needed to make sure that someone was indeed behind him. He turned his head slightly, so he could see out of his peripheral vision. Sure enough, the woman was behind him with her gun shakily aimed towards his back.
Artie turned a little and slowly backed himself into a corner. He hoped that the reason the lady hadn’t fired the gun was because she was also afraid that it might attract zombies. He wasn’t taking any chances though and wanted to keep both in sight. It was no good, they had him cornered.
The guy pointed what looked like James’ handgun at him, “It’s no use, drop your gun.”
Artie noticed the gun and refused, “That’s not going to happen. Why don’t you drop your guns?”
The guy found it humorous as he took a step towards Artie. The woman whispered something to the guy that Artie couldn’t quite make out, which caused the guy to stop walking. He turned toward her and whispered something back. The guy then turned around and walked up next to her. Both faced Artie so they could keep an eye on him. Artie noticed that they continued talking in hushed tones but seemed to be disagreeing on something.
Artie thought that it was his best chance to get away. So, he slowly edged towards the hallway entrance. They stopped talking as the woman raised her gun in a threatening manner towards him.
She claimed, “Don’t move again or I’ll shoot you.”
He froze in place as the man and woman began talking in hushed tones again. Artie was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to make it back to the Warehouse when he noticed something crawling up behind the couple. He tried not to make it obvious that he saw something behind them as the couple continued to talk. It wasn’t until the thing got close enough to the guys feet that Artie saw that it was in fact James or at least his long black hair.
Relief washed over him at seeing his friend alive, but he automatically knew that something was wrong. There was red blood trail from wherever James had crawled from. It also looked like his right leg was bent awkwardly, maybe that was why he was crawling in the first place.
Artie continued to watch the couple talking and forced the thought out of his head. He knew that whatever was wrong with James, was caused by something that the guy had done to him.
Something still didn’t feel right though and the more he thought about it, the more worried he became. I can tell you this. Artie had never been so right and wrong about something at the same time in his whole life.
He was waiting for the right time to make his move whenever he saw something else reach out for the woman from behind. He wasn’t entirely sure who the figure was but knew that it wasn’t James (especially since the figure was smaller in stature). She screamed out more in shock then in fear as she tried to jump out of its reach. She had turned her gun around and pointed at the figure behind her.
The guy reached out and pushed the gun away from the figure as he said something to her. It was a little awkward to watch. From his position, Artie couldn’t quite make out the small figure behind them, but he knew that they must have known that person.
The guy reached out to grab the small figure whenever he screamed out in pain. Artie had been so focused on what he had been observing that he had forgotten all about James. It seemed that James had reached out and bit the guy’s left leg.
Wait! I know what you’re going to ask. Why did he do that? The answer is simple enough but the reasoning behind it is harder to explain, but I’ll try my best.
Artie wasted no time and rushed to help his hurt friend, who seemed to be fighting for his life. He stopped about ten feet from James. He had been right about his feelings all along. The guy must have done something to him because James was no longer James. He looked like he was now a zombie.
Everything became chaotic all at once and Artie didn’t have time to take in the whole scene. He had been so mesmerized by the look on James’ face as he bit down on the guy’s leg that he failed to see the woman get attacked. She had screamed out in either fear or pain or maybe both. Artie said that in the chaos, it was hard to tell. One thing was for sure, it had her by the right arm.
The guy panicked as he looked over at the woman. Artie followed the guy’s gaze and noticed that the small figure resembled the young boy from the pictures. It must have been their boy and it looked like he had a huge chunk of meat missing from his neck. Artie quickly theorized that the boy had been attacked and his parents refused to let him go (maybe they were hoping for a cure or something). If that was the case, then why did the guy attack James?
The guy panicked and kicked his leg out as hard as he could. It was enough to force James to let go of his leg as he rolled over onto his back. Artie’s first instinct was to rush forward to help his friend, but he stopped himself.
It looked like James’ throat had been cut from cheek to cheek. To make matters worse, it looked like his stomach had been ripped open. His bloody intestines were dangling on both sides of his shirt. If things weren’t bad enough, picture James struggling to roll over onto his stomach. It was a gross sight.
After a few minutes of struggling like a turtle on its back, James had succeeded in rolling back over onto his stomach. Without hesitation, he quickly began crawling towards the guy again. His face was vacant of any emotion, except for that predatory look of hunger.
The guy in the meantime had rushed to his wife’s aide. He reached around his son’s shoulders and pulled. For being a child of about ten, he had a strong grip and refused to let go of his mother.
You could see that the boy had bit his mom’s right arm and was fighting to reach her neck. His father was pulling with all of his strength, you could see it in his strained face. He made a comment that made Artie sick to his stomach. The father said something to the effect of them feeding him and that was the thanks they get.
Seeing his opportunity to flee, Artie turned to run away when he heard the husband scream again. Curious about what had just happened, Artie turned back around and saw James biting down on the guy’s leg again. The guy had instinctively let go of his son and reached down to get James off of his leg.
Without
the father holding him back, the son had made it to his mom’s neck and bit down hard. She screamed out in pain as blood sprayed from the wound. She tried to fight her son off the best she could with one hand while holding onto the shotgun with the other. The son must have hit a nerve or something because as she began to swing her arm wildly to break free of her son’s grip, the gun fired.
The downward angle that the gun was pointed when it went off and ended up blowing a hole through her husband’s back. The effect of a shotgun blast spreads the bullets in a wide circumference and being that close to its target, it blew open the guy’s chest. The bullets went clean through into the lower back of James. The guy crumpled to the ground.
Not phased by what had happened, James continued to chomp away at the guy’s legs even after the guy fell to the floor. James started making his way up from the guy’s leg to his upper body. The mother collapsed next to her husband and ended up pulling her son with her.
Without waiting around to see what was going to happen next, Artie ran towards the hallway. He turned the corner and headed towards the front door. He was almost to the door when he stopped short of it. He had come across James’ blood trail that led upstairs.
Artie quickly made up his mind to find out exactly what had happened to his friend. He looked around to make sure that he was safe before he followed the trail of blood up the staircase. Once he made it to the top, he found the source of the blood trail or at least the majority of it.
In the middle of the hallway was a huge puddle of blood with two trails. Obviously, one led down the stairs while the other led to a cracked open door. Artie stepped over the blood as he approached the door.
Once in front of the door, he slowly pushed it open, hoping that it would give him enough time to defend himself just in case something tried to attack him. Luckily, no one was in the bedroom, at least no one alive.
On the floor in the corner of the room was a little girl, she wasn’t moving. He cautiously approached her. The girl looked like a zombiefied version of the little girl from the picture. A knife was sticking out of the side of her right temple.
It looked like the one James had been carrying. She had chunks of exposed flesh dangling from her left arm. In the corner of the room were a few chopped up body parts that looked like they had been chewed on.
Artie looked around and quickly did the math. He figured that originally, either the boy got bit and changed his sister or vice versa. Regardless, one got bit and attacked the other. Their parents must have kept them locked in the room. By the look of the body parts lying around, it looked like the parents appeared to have been feeding them.
While searching for supplies, Artie speculated that James must have stumbled across the room and killed the girl. He most likely noticed the boy causing him to retreat towards the hallway only to be attacked from behind by the father. The dad must have then tried to drag James’ body into the room for his son whenever he heard Artie yell out James’ name. Trying to rush to Artie, the father must have failed to close the bedroom door properly behind him.
The theory would explain everything. Well, maybe not everything. If James was killed by the father then why was he crawling around and attacking like a zombie. After thinking about it, Artie had a theory on that too. Maybe, just maybe, James wasn’t dead when the son attacked him. It was a stretch but it was all he had.
Artie turned towards the bedroom door to leave but didn’t manage a step. Slowly coming into the room was the father, mother, and son. The father had a hole in his chest and was dragging his left leg. The mother was walking better then the father, but looked like she was struggling to keep her head up. A large portion of her right side was missing. Behind them came the son. Artie realized that he was trapped and to make matters worse, they were walking towards him.
He thought about trying to run around them but knew that he wouldn’t make it. Next, he thought about attacking them with James’ knife but wasn’t sure if he could kill all three without getting bit. He glanced behind him and thought about the window, but he quickly put that idea out of his head. Not only was he scared of heights, but he also realized that he wouldn’t have time to climb through it without them attacking him.
By the time he threw the last idea out of his head, the family had already made it halfway across the room. He was out of options. Artie knew at that moment that his only chance of survival was going out the window.
He turned around and rush towards the window. As I mentioned before, he was terrified of heights, but he was more terrified of being eaten alive.
With his adrenaline pumping, he made it to the window with just a couple of steps. He quickly raised the window and pushed out the screen. Looking back to see how much time he had, he realized that they were only a few feet from him. Without wasting anymore time or even thinking about the height, he dove through the window.
Lucky for him, a small tree was just outside the window to catch his fall. Unfortunately for him, he failed to grab the first branch. As luck would have it, the second branch snapped from his momentum. It wasn’t until he came in contact with a third branch that he was able to stop falling. The third branch most likely saved his life because the second branch ended up knocking him sideways. The bad part was that it ended up costing him.
Because of his fear of heights, he panicked as he fell from the window. He frantically reached out to grab whatever he could. The fear of falling to his death got worse for him when he attempted to grab the first two branches and failed. Like I said before, the third branch most likely saved his life but it was at a cost.
With him reaching out like he did, he somehow got his right arm wedged between two smaller branches that made up the third branch. To make matters even worse, he wasn’t able to slow or stop his momentum while falling until the third branch. Guess what happened next? You’re correct if you answered that he broke his arm and hyper-extended his shoulder.
Now the good news was that it stopped him from free falling, but the bad news was that now his arm was broken and stuck between two branches. Basically, he was dangling from his broken arm. So, when I said that he was stuck, I meant it.
Artie claimed that his biggest problem was the pain, not his current situation. He said that pain was so intense, that it was hard to concentrate on the problem at hand. He was usually good at problem solving, especially when he used deductive reasoning.
He tried to use those tactics to get out of his current mess. Since he only had one good arm, he tried to focus on the problem and not the pain. He knew that he only had one good arm and that it wasn’t even his strongest arm.
He was dangling like a pinata and was trying hard to ignore the pain. He knew that he was going to need something to help him ease the pressure off his arm. He was hopeful that whatever he found could even help work his arm loose.
Unfortunately, he had no such luck in seeing anything that would be helpful and what he did see, was on the ground over by the front porch. It was at least a good twenty feet away. The ground itself over a foot below him and the only branch thick enough to hold his height was pretty much on the opposite side of the tree. Yep, he was stuck and his chances of getting out of the situation were not looking good.
I think that this is as good a time as any to inform you that Artie wasn’t much of a church goer. He believed in God sure enough, but he just didn’t feel that he had to go to church to pray (I didn’t get into faith debates with him). Actually, even to this day, I’m not entirely sure where he stood on the subject, but on that day, he had a ‘change’ of heart. He prayed to God.
Not to sound too hypercritical, but it was hard to think that things just couldn’t get any worse for him. Fate, it seemed, had a sense of humor because believe it or not, it started to rain zombies. Well, in the proverbial sense anyways.
The zombies from the house had somehow found their way through the window and fell from the second story. The first two (the mom and son) missed him by a pretty wide margin. Either God or luck played a
Devine Intervention as the father fell on to the small branche that Artie was stuck on. Now, you might ask why I thought that it was Devine Intervention since the zombie hit the branche he was stuck on. Well, it was because the branch broke under their combined weights, allowing Artie to reach the ground safely. Well, as safely as he could under the circumstances.
He hit the hard ground feet first, before collapsing onto his back. He hit it so hard that it caused enormous pain to run up his entire right side, including his broken arm. It was a good thing because it reminded him of what just happened.
Artie slowly rolled over and sat up. He looked over and noticed that the mother and son were not moving. They had hit the ground face first, causing their bodies to bend in unnatural ways. The dad however was still alive but appeared to have been stuck. He had landed on his back, onto one of the broken branches. The branch looked to have pierced his spine. He was fighting hard to roll over onto his stomach, only his upper body was moving while his legs looked lifeless.
Holding his broken arm, Artie slowly got to his feet. Looking around, he realized that he was in the backyard. Before moving towards the gate, he looked up at the house one last time. He knew that he would never go back there. He knew somebody would because of the supplies left behind, but he wouldn’t. Too many horrible memories.
Before turning back around, he noticed some movement from the window that he had just jumped from. He could see fingertips moving around the edge of the windowsill. He figured that it must have been James, but he knew that he was in no shape to find out.
No, he vowed to never come back to the house. He took off his shirt to make a temporary sling. Being a survivor, you learn to use the resources available to you and his shirt seemed like one such resource. He figured that it would hold his broken arm in place until he could get back to the Warehouse. After one final glance toward the window, he turned around and walked away.
Chapter 12 Day 7, Bittersweet Reunion