A Small World

by R. S. Merritt

  Not wanting to believe what she thought she saw she inched closer to the window for a better look. Even as she doubted what she’d seen the twisted face of a Zombie slammed into the window. The head was covered by long wisps of hair that hung down from skin that alternated between being sickeningly tight on the skull or sagging loosely. Teeth gnashed as the thing screamed and flailed at the window trying to get to Brenda. She jumped backwards and caught the backs of her legs on the coffee table they’d been sitting their drinks and weapons down on. A long-forgotten game of spades had left a pile of playing cards on the corner of the table that spilled all over the floor now.

  Crashing backwards onto the floor with her head striking the couch she immediately started trying to scramble up through the splintered remains of the coffee table. The windows in the front of the living room were all cracking and shattering. Inhuman screams filled the room. The house shook as the demonic remains of human beings slammed into the walls from the outside. No longer worried about maintain a strategic silence the men let loose with a volley of semi-automatic weapons fire that blasted the wave of grasping limbs back from the windows. Brenda fumbled out her own pistol to jump into the fray but was yelled at to get the girls and get the hell out.

  Dazed, she felt blood leaking down her chin and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, Brenda took a tentative step towards the hallway. The men were all lined up and firing away as the tide of death kept rolling in. Their bullets were slowing the wave for now, but they knew it would crest and if they were still in that room they’d be torn apart. Brenda knew intuitively the men would time it to give her a minute to get the girls and get out the back door. Stepping into the hallway a trick of the old home’s acoustics blocked the bulk of the screaming coming from the Zombies. That mixed in with a sudden lessening of gunfire as the men reloaded and considered the best targets.

  Brenda looked around the living room. The pastor was missing. Considering that as being in character for the coward Brenda wished the rest of the men luck then focused on getting to the girl’s room as quickly as possible. Behind her the roar of the guns started again as another wave of Zombies climbed over the bloody and broken bodies of the broken remains of the first wave. The attacks would be unrelenting. The Zombies greatest weapon being their complete lack of self-preservation instincts. It was that willingness to charge into gunfire and die to get at the normal humans that drove the expansion of the Zombies across the planet. An overriding hatred fueled by the virus within them that desired nothing but to expand to other hosts. To travel on the saliva and blood and fluids of death and destruction across this small world.

  Brenda saw Caitlyn and the girls standing in the hallway up ahead waiting for her. They were fully dressed. The two older girls were holding machetes and trying to calm down the younger girls. Zoey had her arms wrapped around Caitlyn. Her eyes were closed as she cried loudly. Alice and Doreen were on the ground wrapped in a blanket holding each other. Brenda scooped Doreen up into her arms without breaking stride.

  “Come on girls!” We need to get out of here!” Brenda yelled. The noise level in the house had hit a pitch where the kids probably couldn’t even hear her when she yelled. She demonstrated what she meant instead by pounding down the hallway towards the back door. Caitlyn and the others had been told the plan earlier. If something happened, they were going to try and make it out the back door, run to the lake then turn left and go straight until they found another house with a dock to hide out in. If the next house looked like it may have Zombies in it, they were supposed to try and find a boat and cast off.

  Brenda was glad they’d taken the time to talk through the plan because there was no time now to answer questions. The sounds of gun fire had stopped while the screaming of the damned kept getting louder. That didn’t bode well for the men who’d been covering their retreat. The men who easily could’ve broken and saved themselves instead of trying to slow down the onslaught to let Brenda survive with the kids. They needed to haul ass now or that noble sacrifice would’ve been a complete waste.

  Brenda hit the back door hard. It swung open easily. It swung open so easily that she lost her balance and went flying down into the mud. She rolled her body in midair to keep from landing on Doreen who was screaming like a banshee at the sudden descent. Her back complaining with pain Brenda struggled to get up. Pulling Doreen with her she was halfway to her feet when a Zombie came lurching towards her from around the corner of the home. Brenda desperately searched for the pistol that’d been in her hands a second ago and spotted it lying in the mud. The barrel was stuck straight into the mud.

  She heard a fierce scream behind her. Spinning quickly around in panic mode she saw Caitlyn had set down Zoey and was charging towards the Zombie with the machete held above her head. The Zombie continued to lurch towards her as Caitlyn swung the machete hard in a downward arc that ended with it firmly planted in the skull of the attacker. The Zombie fell to the ground. Caitlyn struggled to get the machete out of the things skull as Zoey ran towards her screaming to be picked back up. Giving up on the machete, Caitlyn picked Zoey up then put her back down again. With Zoey screaming at her to be picked up Caitlyn went down on her knees and puked then struggled back to her feet. She kept looking down at the teen girl she’d just killed. Now that the intense hatred and Zombie snarl had been wiped away in death the girl could’ve been her twin. Now she was lying dead in the mud with a machete stuck in her head.

  Meanwhile, another Zombie had come screeching around the corner. Brenda was back on her feet with Doreen firmly tucked in against her hip. She struggled to pick up the pistol. Myriah was hanging back and holding onto Alice’s hand. The screaming from inside the house continued to get louder. Myriah screamed as she saw the Zombies shambling down the hallway towards them. Brenda picked up the pistol and started banging it against her leg to try and get the mud to come out the barrel. She was praying she wouldn’t accidentally blow her leg off. Myriah slammed the back door shut and took off running across the field towards the lake. Alice pumping her much shorter legs and struggling to keep pace maintained her death grip on Myriah’s wrist.

  The back door flew open. The Zombies flooding the house began to stream out towards the girls. Brenda raised the Smith & Wesson hoping it wouldn’t explode in her face. As soon as she had a clear sight picture on the first Zombie out the back door, she pulled the trigger. She deeply appreciated that the Zombies head exploded and the gun she was holding did not. Screaming for Caitlyn to grab Doreen and follow Myriah, Brenda slowly walked backwards shooting each Zombie as it appeared around either the side of the house or at the back door. She alternated between aiming for those two zones until the magazine in her gun ran empty. She pulled her only other loaded magazine out of her back pocket and swapped them out while Caitlyn scooped up Doreen. Caitlyn was carrying both Doreen and Zoey and making a run for the lake. Myriah and Alice were already disappearing into the brush.

  The Zombies swarmed around both sides of the house. They were also still coming through the open back door. There were even a few coming out the windows on the first and second floor of the house to get at them. Brenda saw more targets in front of her than she had bullets. Knowing she was going to die if she stayed there, she made the choice to stand her ground. She prayed it’d give her grandkids enough time to make it to safety with Alice.

  She resolutely cycled through her remaining magazine. Taking her time to take out the lead targets. She wanted to make sure each bullet counted. Having decided she was going to die to cover the retreat of her grandchildren gave her the luxury of not worrying about her own survival. When the hollow sound of the firing pin on an empty chamber let her know she was out of ammunition she threw the gun as hard as she could at the closest Zombie racing towards her. She watched in complete confusion as the Zombies feet went flying up in the air and the back of its head exploded. She was wondering if maybe she’d had a bullet left in the chamber when she heard the rapid volley of high caliber rifle fire behind
her. She watched as the surge of the Zombies moving towards her was beaten back.

  Realizing she’d just received a reprieve from dying in the next ten seconds she turned and sprinted towards the lake to catch up to her granddaughters. In the tree line behind her she saw the outline of Caitlyn and the others moving into the woods. She saw the silhouettes of two men advancing towards her. They were the ones who firing on the Zombies swarming around the house after them.

  Chapter 27: Barn Doors

  Kyler and Mike marched through the dim light of dusk towards a large barn on the other side of the field they’d stumbled into. Covered in dirt and mud they looked the part of a couple of guys who’d just been chased through the woods for several days by screaming Zombies. The blueberry fields they were stumbling through kept tripping them up as the soft dirt would give way to the furrows hidden underneath the bushes. Off to the right-side of the field they were wandering through was a large fenced in area adjacent to the barn.

  Crows flew up from the corpses of the horses in the fenced in area as Kyler and Mike got close enough to see what was happening on the other side of the fence. The smell of rotting flesh reached them and grew stronger the closer they got.

  “They must’ve been dead for a while.” Kyler said with his shirt pulled up over his nose. He was pointing out the fact that most of the flesh had been ripped off the bodies. The birds were feasting primarily on the scraps.

  “Yeah. Interesting thing is they’ve been turned out into a field where they have feed and hay and that big troth over there with some water in it. I’m thinking either the owner shot them for some reason, or the Zombies came through and killed them. That’d explain why so much of the meat’s missing.”

  They stopped in their tracks as they realized a large enough group of Zombies to rip apart and devour five large horses might still be hanging around. The large barn that’d seemed so welcoming from the opposite side of the field now took on an air of foreboding. Kyler had a flashback to the Goosebumps movies he used to watch when he was younger. The large barn seen in the dying light of day could easily have been the backdrop to a featured episode. The dead horse corpses would’ve probably bumped it up into the PG-13 category though. Especially if it was a 4D show.

  Mike didn’t want to say anything, but he was getting a case of the willies as well. He’d been happy enough to storm across the field with the goal of spending the night in the comfort of the old barn. Now he wondered if maybe that old barn might be filled to the rim with Zombies sleeping off a week long all you can eat buffet featuring Mr. Ed. He didn’t want to turn around and go sleep in a pile of chiggers and pine straw again though. He motioned for Kyler to stop and got close enough to him to so they could whisper back and forth to one another.

  “You wait here. I’m going to sneak around and see if there’s anything in the barn. If it looks clear, I’ll wave you over. If it’s not clear, I’ll be running like hell back in this direction. We’ll need to figure out at that point which way to run for our lives. You go ahead and start thinking about that while I check out the barn.”

  Kyler hoped there was a middle ground if Mike spotted something in the barn that didn’t involve them dying. He looked around the farm to see where they should run if they did indeed need to take off running. Keeping his shirt firmly clamped over his nose he scanned the area. They could make a run for the woods if they needed to. Mike still had a few bullets for his pistol so that’d help them make it if there wasn’t an overwhelming number of Zombies. If there were more than five or six though and they happened to be the fast ones, then there was no way they were making it to the woods.

  There was a two-story house off by the road. There was also a couple of sheds scattered around. Best case they could make a run for the house and hope a door had been left open. So far, they hadn’t found too many homes with open doors, but you could always hope. They’d gotten pretty proficient at breaking in without leaving a large opening for Zombies to follow them in through. Of course, they hadn’t tried breaking in with a large group of Zombies right on their tails yet either. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to try it tonight either. Kyler was hoping Mike was wrong and the barn was just a big empty barn and they’d be able to spend the night in there no problem.

  A few seconds later he glanced towards the barn and saw Mike running rapidly back towards him from the barn. He wasn’t screaming or yelling so there was a good chance that he’d spotted something but wasn’t sure if that something was following him yet or not. Reaching the fence Kyler saw Mike look back behind him then carefully scale the fence and continue to trot over. Kyler kept a careful lookout on the open barn door but didn’t see anything concerning.

  Mike caught up to him and knelt down in the dirt between two rows of blueberries. He stared back at the open barn door and kept his breathing measured until he got it under control. Once he was breathing normally again, he motioned for Kyler to squat down as well so they could talk.

  “The barn is full of those things. The inside smells worse than one of those dead horses’ asses. I just glanced in really quick, but it looked like they were all sleeping. Or laying on the ground meditating. Kind of in a big pile. Either way. The barns a no go. This whole place is pretty much a no go. We need to get the hell out of here quick and quiet.” Mike’s eyes were wide as he said all this. Kyler took that as a bad sign. If this was freaking Mike out it must be pretty bad.

  “There’s a truck over in front of the house. We could try it and see if it starts?” Kyler suggested.

  “Ok. We just need to make sure we have the keys or can see the keys before we touch the truck. We do not want the alarm going off on that thing.”

  Kyler nodded and they both got up and began jogging towards the home. They could only see the back third of the pickup truck from the angle they were running at. They were running with exaggerated care to avoid tripping in the rough earth. Both of them knowing that noise was their biggest enemy now. The sun was going down rapidly aiding them by making it darker outside. That would help as far as the risk of them being seen by anyone or anything while they continued the run across the open field.

  Kyler thought back to less than fifteen minutes before when they’d both been pretty carefree about journeying across the field. It was amazing what a little knowledge could do to make you paranoid. It’d be like taking advanced geology lessons if you lived in California. If you planned to stay there you were probably a lot happier not knowing a whole lot about plate tectonics. Although, at this point Kyler was pretty sure that earthquakes were probably the last thing on any of the surviving Californians minds.

  Wondering why he was thinking about earthquakes in California when he should be focused on making it across this field in Maine before the Zombies woke up and decided to eat him, he focused on the truck. It looked like the back of a decent sized Ford F-150. It was a generic Silver color as far as he could tell in the dimming light. He hadn’t really given a lot of thought to it earlier other than noting he saw a truck and idly wondering if it might have the keys in it or not. Now the existence of those keys might mean the difference between life and death for him and Mike.

  They left the field and trotted slowly around the house. They were busy looking out for any Zombie who might have decided to go for an evening stroll around the farm. On top of everything else they had to worry about loomed the threat that a Zombie seeing them would immediately let out that obscene screech they seemed to have all learned when they caught the Zombie plague. Mike was moving around the house in front of Kyler. He had his pistol to his side while scanning the yard urgently to see if they could make a break for the truck. Not seeing anything that posed an immediate threat, he jogged over to the truck with Kyler right behind him.

  They looked through the truck windows trying to ascertain if the keys were in the truck or not. After a minute of gyrations on the driver’s side Mike took his little penlight over to the passenger side and tried looking from that angle. After a few minutes of that he came
back around the truck to where Kyler was still trying to make out what the shapes were in the center console.

  “I can’t tell if the keys are in there or not. I don’t feel like gambling our lives on it by trying to open the truck door though.” Kyler nodded in full agreement. Without being sure there was no reason to risk their lives by trying to open the door. The alarm going off would definitely get them killed. Even some other kind of innocent beep or the overhead light turning on may signal their doom.

  “Check the house?” Kyler asked. He figured that was better than just walking away from this big beautiful truck. As fun as traipsing through the woods was the truck would be a much better way to traverse the Zombie Apocalypse. By not having the truck they were also gambling they wouldn’t be seen by any of the fast Zombies. If they were spotted and chased by a group of those there was a good chance they’d be caught and killed if they were on foot. Not even the fast Zombies had any chance of keeping up with the truck though. It’d also let them carry supplies if they ever found any. They’d been starving the last few days. Worse case, the house had some food in it. Kyler would kill for a can of Pringles.

  Moving as quickly as they dared in the dark, they made their way up the concrete stairs to the large porch on the front of the house. The wooden floor of the porch creaked as they stepped on it. They went up to the front door and Kyler figured this is where they’d try to open the door and setoff the house alarm after spending all that time being careful about the truck possibly being alarmed. Kyler was already scanning the windows to see if there looked like an easy way to get in when he saw that Mike had tried the front door and was already disappearing into the house.