by Megan Berry
Chapter Three
I take the time to give the crawl space more than the cursory glance I did when Silas stuffed me down here. It’s definitely creepy, probably only three and a half feet tall in any place. I can’t do more than kneel, but it’s massive in other ways and spans the entire length of the house. I carefully shine the light in all four corners, but thankfully there’s nothing down here but spiders and cardboard boxes labeled Christmas.
“I never thought I’d see the day I would be grateful for a room full of spiders,” I say to myself, and my voice sounds so weird and out of place down here. “And now I’m talking to myself!” I huff before I realize that I just did it again, and I bite my lip to quit the verbal diarrhea.
Maybe Silas was right—I really do talk too much…
I sit cross legged on the cement to take some of the pressure off my knees, as I glance around trying to think of my next move. I’m pretty sure it’s still the middle of the night, so I’m trapped down here until sunrise at least. I decide to stay in my crawl space and wait it out. I remember hearing smashing glass when the men broke in, so it’s safe to assume that the house is no longer secure against the dead. My creepy crawl space is looking safer by the minute! Four solid walls made of wood and the only entrance is hidden above my head; a zombie would never be able to figure it out, and so far, the people that took Silas missed it too.
I reach over and pull Silas’s backpack towards me. I already know the pathetic contents of my own. Zero food, low ammo, basically nothing much to help me survive—even all my matches were ruined the day I jumped into the river.
Silas’s backpack is as empty of food as my own, but he has other stuff. I pull out a couple extra knives, and a laminated map of Illinois. He doesn’t have the location of the cabin highlighted, in case the map falls into the wrong hands, but I know it by heart. I set the map down after staring at it longingly for a moment. I can’t help but wonder what Abby is doing right now. I really wish she was here with me, even though I know it’s selfish because Abby would hate it.
I pull out the photo album that I discovered when Silas, Dad and I took that trip up the mountain and I took down that moose. It makes my heart ache a little. That was before my Mom and everyone else got sick. I pat the plastic cover fondly, but I don’t open it as I set it to the side with the knives and map. I’m here alone, and that’s terrifying enough, I don’t want to be inviting any ghosts.
I pull out a small, tightly folded square that looks like shiny aluminum foil, and I can’t help but smile a little at Silas’s forethought. I shake the mylar emergency blanket out and am surprised that it’s as big as it is. I wrap it around my body and continue to dig.
Silas has rope, hooks, a sling shot and a bunch of smooth metal balls for shooting, matches that he was smart enough to keep inside a waterproof bag with a couple extra lighters, half a bottle of water and not a whole lot else.
My adrenaline is flagging by the time I replace everything, so I pull the crinkly blanket up around my head like a cocoon and lay back, forcing myself not to think about the spiders. I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep after everything that’s happened, but my body has other ideas.
I wake up with the blanket stuck to my face, my mouth dry, and for a minute, the intense darkness has me confused. I grope for the flashlight, panicking for a second when I don’t immediately find it. My fingers grasp it finally, though, and I breathe a sigh of relief when the light goes on. It’s still black down here, and I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep, or if it’s even morning. I sit up and peel the tinfoil blanket off my face where my sweat must have acted like some sort of binding agent. I wince a little as it comes off, taking a few hairs with it, and reach for the half bottle of water that I left out. I’m so hungry that my first instinct is to chug the whole thing, but I don’t have another bottle, so I limit myself to only half. My stomach growls angrily when I set it back down and twist the lid back on.
I rub my face as I shine the flashlight around the crawl space, trying to think about what to do. My gaze lands on the two backpacks, and I know I can’t realistically carry them both.
I decide to take Silas’s and leave my own—at this point I’m practically dragging around an empty bag anyway—at least Silas still has supplies. I transfer over my few meager belongings into Silas’s bag and switch the clip that holds my axe to the back of the bag, and then I waste way too much time painfully folding the emergency blanket back into a tiny square. I’m tempted to leave it, but I don’t know if I’ll need it again or not, and I don’t want to be responsible for losing Silas’s supplies. I don’t want more to answer for when I come to his rescue.
I don’t know how long I stare at the door above my head before I finally make my move. Silas had the only watch on his wrist when he was taken. I’m rooted to the spot by fear, and I know it’s weak, but I allow myself to indulge in it a little. I’m relatively safe down here, but as soon as I open that door, anything could happen.
I know what Silas would say if he was here.
“Get your ass in gear, Blondie.” My voice sounds weird in the silence, but it does the trick, nonetheless. I’m half scared that the door will be locked when I try and lift it, and I’ll end up slowly starving to death down here—but it’s not. Of course, Silas would never do that to me.
I climb the ladder with my axe in my hand. I don’t want to get too close to the zombies if I can avoid it, and my gunfire might bring back the men that took Silas. My first push against the lid is tentative and encounters a lot of resistance, which makes my heart stutter in fear that I really am locked in down here. I push again, harder this time, and it moves a little.
“What the heck?” I mutter to myself as I shove against the door—something is on top of it. Horrible ideas of what it could be flash through my head. What if it’s a zombie, or Silas’s body and they didn’t really take him away last night but instead they killed him, and I was actually sleeping underneath his corpse this whole time. Or, what if it’s Silas, AS a zombie. The thought fills me with nearly paralyzing fear—before I remember the cat scratching tower that sat there and hid the door. It only makes sense that Silas would put it back over top to try and hide me. I climb a little higher up the ladder and use my back to push this time. Something crashes up top and the weight above me is gone. I don’t adjust the pressure I have on the door quickly enough, and it slams open with a bang, making me want to jump out of my skin. I shine the flashlight up above me, expecting to see a rotten face staring down at me at any moment, but nothing happens.
The room above appears dark, but it is a windowless room, so I climb the ladder a little higher to get a better idea of what’s going on. The door to the hallway is splintered and hanging on its hinges, and I feel a tight knot in my stomach that has nothing to do with the hunger. I wish Silas hadn’t sacrificed himself to save me. I never wanted that.
Light is visible, shining down the hallway. So, I know the sun is up. I have to go outside. I pull myself the rest of the way out of the hole in the floor, keeping a tight grip on the axe. I nearly walk away and leave everything wide open, but I have a ‘What Would Silas Do?’ moment and carefully shut the hidden door, without slamming it this time, and replace the cat scratching post. It never hurts to have a secret place we can come back to, and I don’t want those men to come back and see that Silas was lying to them.
I pause in the doorway, listening for anything that might try and kill me, but it’s hard to hear anything over the rapid pounding of my own heart. I retrace my steps, back to the bedroom where Silas and I slept before the men came and retrieve my pants from underneath the sink where Silas hid them. It makes more sense to me now, he didn’t want the men to know another person was here.
Silas’s clothes are gone from the shower curtain and I’m sure the men took them, although I have no idea why anyone would want someone else’s zombie encrusted jeans.
My own zombie encrusted jeans are still wet, but since I washed both pairs, I don�
�t have any other choice than to throw them on over top my thermal pants, and it helps to keep most of the dampness away.
I pause in the bathroom doorway and stare in the mirror, my blonde hair is pulled back into the braid that I always wear now, and my face is lined with worry. I’m out of excuses and reasons to stay in this house.
I force myself to walk down the hall towards the front door, and that’s when I hear it. The weird rattling sound of a zombie. Silas’s backpack feels kind of weird on my back, but I push the stray thought from my mind. I need to focus on not getting killed.
I see the zombie as soon as I step into the living room. The glass insert in the front door has been smashed out, but the door is still intact, and the zombie is leaning through and peeking into the house, black ooze dribbles down the otherwise white door interior. I hear the rip of fabric as the remaining glass shards tear holes in the zombie’s already ragged shirt, and I try not to think about what the glass has probably done to its skin—hence the black ooze.
The zomb starts raising hell when it notices me, and its rattle turns into excited moans that make me cringe at their volume. The zombie only has his upper torso sticking through the top of the door, while the rest of him is still outside, so I rush forward with my axe raised and hit him as hard as I can. The blade falls on the back of his neck when he moves at the last moment. I was aiming for his head, but it sinks down into the flesh and severs the spinal cord anyway. The zombie goes lifeless, half in the door and half out, and I frown at its disgustingly rotten skin.
Now it’s in my way. I reach out gingerly, using my axe as a poking stick, and push the zombie back through the glass. It isn’t easy with all his dead weight impaled with glass shards, like a bramble bush snaring its victim, but eventually he comes free and disappears back through the window. He lands on the porch outside with a hard thump.
I turn the knob and have to put my shoulder into it since the damn zombie is now laying right in the way of the door. I get it open enough for me and the backpack to squeeze through, and then I quietly shut the door again to try and keep all the other necrotic jerks from getting in while I’m gone. I don’t want to find myself in need of the hidey hole and then have to fight off a horde of zombies just to get to it.
The house is set back a little way from the river, with a tree-lined driveway that offers quite a bit of cover. I’m not the best person with directions, but I can hear the familiar roar of the water, so I know which way it is. I step over the zombie and head down the steps. My first instinct is to go back to the river and follow it upstream back to Louisville, but Silas purposely told me to stay away from the river now. He also told me to head back to the cabin, though, so I’m not sure how much merit I should put in what he says.
I finally decide to go with what I know, which is the river. Over the past five days, Silas and I have been over what feels like every inch of its banks. I still need to find Dad and the others, but Silas has temporarily taken precedent since I’m at least kind of sure I know here he is, and I need him to help me if I’m going to find the others.
I head down the driveway, staying close to the trees so that I can use them for cover if need be. I feel a little uneasy disobeying a direct order from Silas, but I just can’t write him off and run home like he wants.
I reach the bank of the river after a five-minute walk, and I find it reassuring when it looks exactly the same as it always does. Silas and I usually walk right along the edge of the water, looking for clues that might have washed up, but today I’m a little gun shy—literally—so I stay further away from the water and cling to the edge of the tree line instead. It doesn’t make me feel much safer though, because I keep expecting zombies to pop out of the trees to grab and tear at me at any minute.
A couple of months ago, I never could have imagined the day that I’d rather take my chances with flesh eating monsters than members of my own human race—even the bad men with guns kind. My stomach is in knots as I continue along the tree line. Now that I’m further away from the roar of the water, it’s easier to hear the sounds in the trees. I can even hear birds chirping—which is why I’m so surprised when a gravelly voice calls out for me to stop.
“Hold it right there.”
I’ve become so engrossed, listening for the signature moan of the dead, that the sound of an actual human voice scares the bejesus out of me, and I can’t bite back the girly scream that escapes my throat.
I finally locate the guy from his laughter; it’s cold and mean and makes me want to pee my pants. I swear at myself inside my head for not following Silas’s instructions and staying away from the river.
The guy is huge, probably every bit as large as Jack, but the rest of him is nothing like Jack. He’s tall, but he’s overweight, wearing a grubby white wife beater top, and he has mean eyes. His whole face looks, for lack of a better word, mean. I briefly think about making a run for it, but the handgun he has aimed at my face dissuades me.
“Hold it right there, girly,” he says, stepping out of the trees, and I frown.
I recognize that voice. It’s the same guy that was hurting Silas last night—the ringleader. I glance behind him to see if Silas is with him, but as far as I can tell, the guy is alone.
“What do you want?” I demand, barely keeping the quiver of fear out of my voice. The man seems to think scaring me is funny and laughs again.
“We can start by you throwing down that axe,” he tells me, motioning to the axe that I’m still gripping in my right hand. I realize then that he hasn’t spotted the smaller knife in my other hand. I toss the axe at his feet, using it as a distraction to tuck the smaller knife further up my sleeve.
“Happy now?” I demand.
The man nods, spitting a huge gob of tobacco out at my feet.
I don’t even try to resist the urge to jump back.
“Ecstatic,” he deadpans back at me, and I’m pretty sure this guy has never been ecstatic about anything in his entire life.
“What are you going to do to me?” I blurt out, but I instantly regret asking. I’m not sure I really want to know. The guy gives me an assessing look.
“Where are the rest of your little friends?” he demands.
On the spur of the moment, I decide to play dumb. “Who?” I ask innocently.
The man glowers at me, his finger twitching on the trigger. “I don’t have time for games. I want that bonus for bringing back the scum that killed the doctor, and the poster did say dead or alive,” he warns me.
My blood runs cold thinking about what that means for Silas. “What did you do to him?” I demand, my grip tightening on my knife.
Gravel voice laughs at me again. “Oh, now you know each other?” he demands, but I can barely hear him over the anger pumping through my veins.
“Where is Silas?” I scream, barely keeping my wits about me enough to keep the knife hidden.
“Was that his name?” the guy taunts me.
And of all the crazy things to do in that moment, I burst into tears. I can’t help it, thinking about a world where Silas no longer exists is just too much. Gravel voice is completely unmoved.
“Shut the hell up, before you bring every dead head in the area right to us,” he hisses at me, but I’m too far gone. It’s been one hell of a week and I just can’t stop, at least no one but this jerk is here to see it!
“I... can’t…stop,” I manage to get out around ragged gasps as the tears continue to roll down my cheeks
“Jesus. H. Christ. I didn’t kill him!” the guy yells at me, striding forward a couple steps to grab my arm. He squeezes it painfully, making me gasp when I feel the bones crunch uncomfortably. “He’s back in Louisville in jail, and you’ll be joining him shortly,” the guy promises with a twisted smile.
I try and yank my arm out of his punishing grip, but he just holds on tighter as his other hand comes out of nowhere to slap me hard across the face.
I would have collapsed from the force, but he keeps my arm twisted, holding me up
. I let out an angry scream and he slaps me again, openhanded across the other cheek.
“Stop it,” I manage to spit out, along with a gob of blood from where my lip hit my front tooth.
“I can keep going all day, girly,” he promises me, and I have to resist the urge to stab him right then and there. He’s too strong, and he’d probably take the knife away before I could inflict any real damage. He watches me to see if I’m going to lip him off again, and it’s tough to resist, but I swallow my insult back. The man laughs gleefully. “That’s better. They don’t care what kind of condition you’re in when you get there,” he tells me, his eyes flickering towards me in a way that fills me with dread.
A moan sounds behind us in the trees and the guy lets out an annoyed sigh. “I told you, your hollering would bring them,” he tells me, landing a final hard slap to the side of my face before throwing me to the ground. “Just remember that you can’t outrun my gun,” he warns me as I land hard against a rock and scrape up my hand.
It hurts but I can’t think of that now. I look up at my captor, my entire face burning with the heat of his blows, and I watch him raise his gun. There are three zombies grouped together, wading out of the underbrush. Gravel Voice raises his gun and takes down the first one with a deadly accuracy that I know I can’t outrun.
I scramble to my feet, but he doesn’t even spare me a glance; he’s so confident that he has the upper hand against a little girl. A horrible idea hits me, and I know I have to act fast. It’s one of those things that you can’t allow yourself to think about for too long, or you’ll never have the balls to do it.
I creep forward with the knife and stab him as hard as I can, right in the side. I feel a bit of resistance and am pretty sure that I hit a rib. The guy lets out a surprised scream as he drops his gun and clutches at his side. I leave the knife in him and take a couple steps back.
