The kids were all getting gaunt eyed. Restraining them was getting depressing. They were a bunch of little girls. They had no business being locked in a closet told to keep their mouths shut or the Zombies would get in and kill them. The little girl Brenda had rescued had become Zoey’s closest friend. They sat under the shelves and whispered secrets. They quietly giggled away most of the day. Doreen seemed like she was doing ok. They’d kept the arm bound tightly to her body in a cast they’d fashioned using duct tape and rulers. It seemed to be doing the job. She was in pain, but it got better every day. Brenda assumed the little girl’s arm was probably going to heal wrong but hopefully it would at least be functional.
Other than the Zombie beating away on the door leading into the church hallway they didn’t seem to have attracted the attention of any others. Brenda was considering opening the door and bashing away at the Zombie beating on the door with a shovel. Then they’d be able to tell how screwed they were by taking a quick look up and down the hallway. Assuming the one who kept hammering away on the door didn’t overpower and kill them. Assuming there weren’t twenty of the damn things standing in the hallway just waiting for them to make a stupid mistake. If it’d just been her stuck in the closet, she probably would have chanced it. The children were making her a lot more cautious.
She figured she could probably fling open the door, bash away with a shovel and make it out of the church even if there were a couple of the demons out in the hallway. She didn’t have as much confidence she could bash away and get out of the building while protecting five children at the same time. The two older ones would be able to help but it was still too risky without more information. She already knew she couldn’t rely on the pastor to help at all. He’d shown he was just a big coward. She’d considered the option of using him as bait. Maybe if she threw him out the exterior door and he took off running most of the Zombie’s would chase him out of the loading dock area? Problem being he didn’t seem like he was in good enough shape to lead the Zombie’s very far before they’d catch him. He’d probably just die hammering on the door trying to get back in. He’d die crying like the useless coward he was.
Brenda paced around the confines of the storage closet. Pausing to offer encouragement, hugs and backrubs as needed. It really was starting to stink in the hot, enclosed space. Body odor was mixing with the smells of their waste. Utilizing the storage containers as their toilets had taken some trial and error. They’d had the excess clothes on the shelves to use as rags for the mishaps, but those rags were still sitting in the storage closet with them. Brenda was taking another mental inventory of the supplies left on the shelves. They were trying to stick to three bottles of water per person per day but with seven of them in the closet that still came out to about a case of water per day.
The seemingly unlimited supplies she’d seen when she first figured out that they were stuck in a storage closet were getting used up way too quick for comfort. It didn’t help that the pastor felt that if a child got three water bottles, he was entitled to twice that many. The pastor also helped himself to food whenever he felt like it. Brenda was in a constant state of amazement that a man who’d dedicated his life to the church could be so selfish. He must be a really good actor to have pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes for this long. It’d become glaringly obvious he hated children. All the kids in the closet were scared of him.
She was running out of patience with him. It wasn’t just that he was useless and had a horrible attitude and had hurt her grandbaby and probably crippled her for life. It was that he was a burden. He took more than his share and then did nothing to earn it. She had to plan around him as if he were one of the children. She watched as he opened his seventh bottle of water of the day. She decided she’d had enough. She got up to go tell him to get the hell out of her closet. She’d reached the conclusion that using him as Zombie bait was the only way he’d be useful. She justified it in her mind as protecting her babies. They were going to die of thirst in here before they got a chance to escape if they kept this fat, slob of a human being in the closet with them draining all the supplies. She blamed herself for having allowed him to stay here this long already.
She walked over to confront him and noticed he was pouring some of the water out on his head. He was wasting the water. He was pouring it on his freaking head. All compassion drained out of her. He looked up with a chagrined smile at being caught wasting the bottled water as she poked him with one of the shovels. She poked him hard.
“Get out.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t drink any more water until it’s my turn. I’m just so hot in here. If you can just –“He was cutoff when she jammed the blade of the shovel into his throat hard enough to leave an ugly red mark. He fell over and crawled away from her towards the interior door to the church.
“No. I think it’ll be better if you make a run for it out of the other door. Get up and get over there.”
“That’s murder! If you put me out there, I’ll be killed!” The pastor’s voice was getting dangerously loud. The Zombie on the other side of the interior door started slamming itself into the door harder than it had for the last few days.
“Shut up or I’ll just fling your body out on the loading dock. I’m looking to give you a chance here. You can grab a few bottles of water and one of the shovels. We just can’t support you staying in this closet with us any longer. We’re running too low on supplies. You knew that, and you kept taking more than your share. Taking food, literally, out of the mouths of babes.”
Bill charged her. He was a coward but even a coward will fight when backed into a corner. Especially if the coward just sees a scrawny, old woman standing in his way. Brenda had been ready for this move. She pegged him hard with the shovel and put his ass back on the ground. He’d have a massive bump on the back of his head if he lived long enough for it swell up. Caitlyn jumped on his back with a can of peas in each hand. She was ready to put him out of commission completely at a nod from her Mammy.
Brenda shook her head. Caitlyn climbed off of him and Brenda kicked him in the face. Two of the kids were crying. Brenda nodded at Myriah and Caitlyn to go try and comfort the smaller kids.
“Get up. Time to go for a run.” She said to the pastor in a cold, hard voice that was void of compassion for the man she saw as an obstacle to keeping her grandkids alive. A man unworthy of the profession he’d chosen. A fake ambassador of god. They were surrounded by the corpses of good men and women and somehow this snake had slithered in here and managed to survive. Well, he’d need to go find himself another hole to hide in.
“Pick up the counter and let yourself out the door. You can grab a shovel to take with you to knock the Zombies off but if you take one wrong look at me, I’m going to spill your brains on the floor right now.”
“You’re killing me. This is murder in gods’ eyes. You’ll burn in hell for this.”
“I’ll see you there then you piece of garbage. Go.”
The pastor grabbed a shovel to take with him and slowly unlocked the exterior door. He pushed it open with exaggerated caution. He took one small step out into the bright light of day with the shovel held out in front of him. Without any warning he threw the door completely open as Brenda was trying to grab the knob to pull it closed. She’d thought he may try and distract the Zombies by giving them a closet full of easy victims. Brenda had been expecting the coward to pull this move. She gathered her strength to shove him hard enough with her shovel to heave him completely off the loading dock. She was hoping to get the door closed before any of the Zombies managed to figure out what was going on and make a rush for them.
As they both stood there ready to fight like a couple of gardening buccaneers a pickup truck came cruising into the loading dock area. Men in camouflage jumped out carrying long metal rods and heavy looking miniature sledge hammers. The men swarmed over the Zombies still wandering around the loading dock and beat them to a pulp. They had a pretty good system down where the men with poles
would trip up the Zombies and knock them on the ground. The men with the hammers would then swoop in and bash the Zombies head in while the man who’d tripped up the Zombie held the tip of the pole on the Zombies chest to keep it pinned down. Crude but effective.
The man who appeared to be in charge walked over and gazed curiously at the two spade duelers. He seemed nonchalant about the horror show taking place behind him as he regarded Brenda and the pastor facing off with their now lowered shovels.
“I take it you two aren’t on the friendliest of terms?” He asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
Chapter 15: If at First You Don’t Succeed
“Now what?” Kyler asked. Projecting his voice behind him into the backseat. Seth had finally quieted down. Judging by the number of can openings he’d heard Mike should still be semi-sober. The frequency of the can openings meant that the sobriety would probably not be long lived. Luckily, he’d only found the single six-pack back at the house. God knew what other flasks and airplane bottles he had hidden on him in reserve though.
“Same thing we’ve been doing.” Mike’s voice drifted lazily up from the back seat. He wasn’t slurring yet, but he sounded very relaxed. “Keep trying to gather supplies. We’re not going to get too far if we don’t have extra gas, ways to get more gas, weapons, food and water. I say we try and find a new house to check out. If we find one that seems safe, we could spend the night. We need the rest. Once we hit the highway and start rolling through cities it’s going to be a different game than it is out here in the sticks.”
“How’s Seth?” Kyler asked. Everything Mike had just said made perfect sense. Just because stopping at houses and trying to find supplies hadn’t worked out well for them so far didn’t mean they should stop trying. They may have lost the supplies they’d gathered in the F-150 but they’d gained a shiny new SUV with a mostly full tank of gas. To be honest, most of the supplies they’d lost had been complete crap anyway.
“He’s good. A little freaked out by the whole situation. You’re good, right Seth?” Kyler saw Mike leaning towards the passenger side of the backseat as he checked on Seth. Seth muttered an inaudible reply then turned his back to Mike and pretended to be trying to go to sleep. Mike awkwardly rubbed the boys back for a few seconds before retreating back to the driver’s side of the back seat. He was clutching his last two cans of beer by the plastic mesh. He was holding them together like some sort of alcoholic’s rosary.
“Ok. Hold off on those last two beers. I see a mailbox up ahead so let’s see what we see.” Mike muttered something pissed off sounding from the back seat. Kyler didn’t hear any more cans being opened though so he chalked it up as a minor victory. He needed someone to help him secure the house and look for supplies. It was getting to the point where he was scared to let Seth out of the SUV. The boy was going to freeze up at a critical time and get himself killed. Seth dying would be Kyler’s fault. He knew that and accepted it. He wasn’t too sure how much longer Mike would be able to hold himself together either. The beer was just one symptom that Mike was losing it. He’d caught Mike just staring off into the distance a few times. Mike laughed it off when Kyler called him out on it but they both knew he was reaching his breaking point.
They drove along in an awkward silence. Kyler turned in at the next mailbox and began the drive down a long country road. The road was covered with loose gravel. It was washed out in multiple places. Kyler started driving more slowly to avoid bouncing everyone’s heads off the ceiling. Of course, he did that after he hit the first bump at about thirty miles per hour. The silence had been shattered by cussing directed at him from both Seth and Mike. At least something had managed to break both of them out of their funk. He decided not to tell them he’d been driving too fast because he was curious what the shocks were like on an eighty-thousand-dollar SUV. He’d hit the bump at a high speed on purpose only to find out the shocks weren’t much better on the Rover than the ones on his mom’s used mini-van.
The long driveway ended at a house surrounded by enormous pine trees. There was a concrete circular driveway that served as a large parking pad in front of the home. The house itself was two stories of old colonial style brick. The shingles and other woodwork on the outside of the house bespoke of the care the home had received. The place was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. A huge front porch with white bannisters completed the picture.
The lifeless bodies sprawled across the stairs were the only thing that marred the rustic beauty of the place. Kyler drove over closer to try and see if he could tell anything about what was going on by the state of the bodies. He circled around the circular end of the driveway so that the driver’s side of the Range Rover would pass by closest to the bodies. As they got closer, he made out three distinct bodies. One was a young girl in a blue dress that’d ridden up to the top of her thighs. One of her legs was twisted unnaturally behind her. She was the only one who was facedown. Other than the leg and the way she was lying she could almost have been sleeping on the stairs or playing some sort of weird game of freeze tag.
The other two bodies were most definitely not playing any sort of games. One of them was an older man. He was dressed formally but missing one shoe. His sports coat was opened to a gaping hole in his dress shirt. Bright red pieces of the insides of the man were visible through the hole. They’d disturbed two crows when they pulled into the driveway and now Kyler could see what the crows had been eating. The other corpse was that of an older woman who was also dressed formally. She looked like she’d taken a couple of shotgun blasts to the face then her skull had been turned into a crow buffet. The long grey tufts of hair still attached to the skull and the long, grey dress being the main ways they could tell that one had been a woman.
Kyler took in the scene. It was grotesque. He was focused on the best way of getting over the bodies and into the home. He wondered what it said about him that he was adjusting pretty well to this new normal. In the seat behind him, he heard Seth whimpering and pressing himself further down into the floor. A few seconds later, as Kyler was putting the SUV into park, he heard the sound of a can of beer being popped open. He sighed and gave Mike a minute to go ahead and enjoy the stress relieving elixir. He wondered how he’d gotten stuck being the leader of their small group when the man in the back seat was three times his senior and had military experience to boot.
“We goin’ in there?” Mike slurred. So much for him staying sober with only limited alcohol. Kyler assumed his intuition was correct and the man had a flask or two hidden somewhere on his body.
“I don’t see where we have much choice. I think the bodies on the stairs were put there by the owner of the house. He’s not shooting at us right now so he’s either sleeping or he already left.” Kyler said. He was checking out every window in turn to see if he saw any kind of movement inside the house. He’d considered beeping the horn or yelling or something along those lines. The problem he saw with that was it would attract any Zombies in any of the nearby houses to come see what all the ruckus was about.
“The owners may still be inside. They may be Zombies now too.” Seth decided to add to the conversation. The tone of his voice making it obvious Seth didn’t think going inside was an idea they should even be considering.
“We don’t have a choice. We either go in or we drive until we run out of gas and get swarmed and die. We need weapons. We need food. We need some freakin sleep.”
“It’s all good. We’ll be fine.” Mike jumped in to soothe the situation. Kyler realized he’d been getting a little loud. It’d snapped Mike out of his buzz at least.
“Wait here. Mike and I can go check the place out and make sure it’s safe.” Seth shook his head to show he understood. Kyler opened his door and started to get out.
“Don’t leave me!” Seth yelled. The outburst seemed to echo all around the yard. Kyler didn’t move. He just stared at the house and surrounding yard to see if he detected any signs of movement. “Don’t leave me here by myself.” Seth repeat
ed. This time more quietly although you could tell he was still on the verge of panic.
“Dude. You’ve got to keep the volume turned down a couple notches. Being loud attracts those things. Remember how many of them showed up when that car alarm started going off?” Kyler made eye contact with Seth to try to emphasize the level of caution that was needed. He was trying to get through to the kid before the kid got them all killed. Seth nodded. He remembered. The memory didn’t seem to be helping his level of agitation though.
“You’ll be able to see us the whole time. We’re just going to go up the stairs over there and try to see if anybody’s home.” Mike said in a reassuring voice. Seth was looking back and forth between the two of them. His fear of getting out of the car fighting with his fear of being left behind.
Kyler gave Seth a harsh look as a warning to stay quiet and then got out of the SUV. Mike did the same in the back. Kyler glanced in the backseat and saw Seth had tears seeping out of his eyes as he struggled to hold back sobs and stay quiet. He was fighting hard to stay quiet when his terror of being left behind had him wanting to scream out not to leave him. Kyler felt like a complete jerk but shut his mind to the image of Seth crying and focused on the pile of dead bodies instead.
A Small World Page 11
