Outstretched hands reached out for John as the dead wailed, trying to get hold of him. He eyed the six-foot brick wall around the edge of the parking lot and tried to gauge the distance. He took one step onto the hood of the truck and pushed off with all his strength. He crossed the open space between the truck and the wall and hit the top of the bricks with a solid thud against his stomach.
He pushed up the rest of the way and stood on top of the wall, and then he looked down on the other side at an empty alleyway. He wasted little time jumping down. He recognized the housing tract by the standard model of houses, but his mind was moving too fast to remember how to get back out to the main street. He took a moment to listen for any sounds he could recognize. Unable to make out anything over the constant moan of the dead behind the wall, John turned to the north and ran. He picked the first backyard he could see into and pushed open the gate. He ran up to the back patio and searched for any signs of life.
“Is there anyone in there?” He banged on the back door as hard as he could. “I need to get in. They’re coming.” He continued to pound his fist on the door. A quick look revealed a wide window at the back of the house covered over with drapes. “Come on, damn it.” He banged his forehead on the door and stood there trying to decide what to do next when a low voice called out to him.
“Go away.”
“What…hey, open up,” John said.
“Get off my porch.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you? I need help. Let me in.”
“I have a gun in here.” There was a long uncomfortable silence as two people whispered back and forth on the other side of the door. “I’ll shoot you through the door. Get off my patio.”
John instinctively held his hands up and backed away. He was shocked by the threat but wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do the exact same thing. He knew what caused the virus, but no one else did. He headed back through the gate and into the alleyway. He considered trying the next house but didn’t hold out much hope for a different result. He studied the houses and his eyes fixed on an awkward movement at the far end of the alley. A figure stepped out into the open, looked back at John, and then moved back behind a fence. The figure reemerged a minute later crouched down on one knee. John could see it was a man and not one of the dead. The two appeared to come to the same conclusion at the same time. John started running toward him as the man came to his feet and nervously waited. He approached and realized the figure was barely a man at all. The baby face and shoulder length hair reminded John of a bass player in a local band more than anything else.
“Hey, man, you all right?” John asked.
The young man studied John closely. “I’m Brian,” he said.
John shook his hand and did his own study for open wounds. “John.”
“What the hell is all this?” Brian asked. “I got up this morning and everything was fine. I was standing in my kitchen eating cereal and I saw my neighbor in our backyard with blood all over his shirt.” He wiped at his eyes with his hand and John thought he might break down. “He tried to bite me. I’ve known that guy all my life and he tried to freaking bite me. I had to defend myself.”
John nodded and looked behind them to make sure the coast was clear. “I get it,” he said. “You did what you had to. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I’ve done things.” They looked into each other’s eyes and silently settled the conversation. “The question is what are we going to do now? I have to get home to my wife and son. Where’s your family?”
Brian shrugged. “My mom works at the hospital. She wasn’t home when I got up this morning. My dad lives out in Martinsville.”
John wasn’t sure if Brian knew how bad it was at the hospital, but he decided not to get into it. “We need weapons and a car.”
Brian hesitated, looked over his shoulder, and then eyed John as if he hadn’t heard what he said.
“You still with me?” John asked, not sure if Brian had seen too much for his own good. He reached out and shook him on the shoulder. “You have to keep it together.”
Brian’s expression shifted, and he focused. “I heard you,” he said. “My mom took her car to work. I don’t have my own.”
John considered their options and decided to keep moving. He didn’t want a tagalong but knew having someone might come in handy if he ran into trouble. “Let’s head back toward Main Street, try and see if we can get around that main group of them.”
“Group of what?” Brian asked.
“You mean you haven’t…” John stopped. He wasn’t sure how to explain what was happening, but a second later, he didn’t have to. Three figures stepped out around the housing tract wall in the direction of the street in front of the houses. It took only a glance for John to know what was coming. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said as he grabbed Brian’s arm, “but your neighbor wasn’t crazy.”
“How can you know that?”
John spun Brian around to face the front of the house. “He was already dead.”
“What?” Brian asked. “Hey, there’s someone else…” His words trailed off as the figures came forward like slow, clumsy animals, their mouths opening and emitting a terrible sound. Brian took a slow step backwards as John readied himself to run. “There’s something not right about them.” Brian took another step back as the figures closed the distance.
John glanced back in the direction he’d come and found the way still clear. The morning sunlight hit the new arrivals on the face, and their predicament was plain to see. It was obvious one was a man, the other two women. The remains of the females were left open for the world to see. They each appeared to have been attacked by a group, the evidence in the numerous bite marks along their exposed chests. One woman was missing a breast, leaving a vile hole where it had been. The wound was an awful purple color, and the stains of blood soaked the remains of a shirt, now only over one arm, and some tattered cloth that had been a skirt.
The man was in better shape by comparison. His dark blue suit and off-white tie was still pressed and ready. His face on the other hand was beyond recognition. The skin had been pulled from the bone, leaving behind most of the exposed skull. Pieces of muscle and tissue flapped between the jaw bones as his mouth opened, revealing a half-eaten tongue.
“This isn’t happening,” Brian said.
John wasn’t going to wait to see if he snapped out of it. He offered one last try before running. “Just run.”
Brian hesitated for a second longer and then managed to bring himself back to reality. John wasn’t willing to wait. He’d already passed the location on the wall where he’d jumped over from the shop’s parking lot. He glanced down the side of the houses as he went by, checking for any movement along the street. His attention was focused elsewhere, so he didn’t notice the figures coming toward him from the far end of the alley until he was only a few yards away.
He reached the opposite end of the block and found himself in the same situation as when he started, confronted by the walking dead. He counted half a dozen dead and heard more coming before spinning around. He ran back in the direction he’d come, spotting Brian sprinting directly toward him. The younger man’s face was consumed by a lost expression, his eyes glossed over as if somewhere else altogether.
“We have to make for one of the houses,” John said. Brian didn’t appear to hear him. John had to stop to make sure they wouldn’t run into one another. “Brian, hold up.” He held his hands out in defense, ready to take the force of Brian if he didn’t stop. The younger man pulled up before impact.
“What do you mean dead?”
John heard his question, but it took a second for him to process the last pieces of the conversation they’d had. “Dead,” he said. “They’re all dead, walking dead to be exact.”
Brian blinked.
“I don’t know how else to explain it,” John said. “We don’t have time to go into much more detail than that.” He looked over Brian’s shoulder and discovered the three zombies had
followed him and brought company with them. All told, John counted at least twenty between the two groups coming from either end of the alley. “We have to get into one of these houses.”
He pulled open the gated entrance to the backyard of the house he already tried to get into. He knew there was someone home and he hoped if they got inside, the dead would wander off looking for flesh somewhere else. They stepped up onto the back porch and pounded on the door.
“Come on, I know you’re in there,” John said.
Brian kept his eyes on the dead. The two groups were nearing one another, both sides closer to the back gate. He whimpered like a dog, unable to piece together a cry for help. John heard him but kept at the task.
“You can’t leave us out here to die. Open the damn door,” he said.
The muffled answer came from the same voice as before. “Get off my patio. I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” John said. “You have a gun and you’ll shoot me through the door. You might as well pull the trigger.” He kicked the door as hard as he could. “Cause if you don’t let me in, I’m going to die out here anyway.”
The mass of dead pushed into the back gate like walking into a wall. Their arms reached out toward the porch trying to force through. The collective sound of their longing to feed rose like a choir of death. The poles holding the gate and surrounding fence bent in from the combined strength of the dead. Brian slammed into John’s back as he tried to push his way into the house.
“They’re coming through.”
“Open the damn door or you’re going to have these things crawling through your windows,” John said.
There was a loud snap as the wooden gate gave way. The dead poured into the backyard like a tidal wave. At least two dozen walking corpses pushed through, aiming directly for the porch and the two men hopelessly cornered. Brian pushed at John with all his strength, resulting in John’s head smashing into the door. He felt the blood trickle down his face from a cut on his forehead. The two men yelled at the top of their lungs as they kicked and banged on the door. The roaring moans drowned out the sounds of the attack on the door as the first of the dead reached the porch stairs.
John couldn’t bring himself to turn around. He knew they would be on him in seconds and there was nothing he could do to stop them from tearing him apart. He closed his eyes and waited. He never heard the door unlock, and when it swung open, he was not prepared, falling forward onto a hardwood floor. Brian fell on top of him, knocking the wind out of him. John rolled to his left and forced Brian onto the floor. A shotgun blast erupted above them as they tried to roll out of the open doorway.
John jumped up to his feet as the door shut and the moaning of the dead was reduced to a muffled echo. He pulled Brian up by the collar of his shirt and was met by their apparent savior. The owner of the home was a short, rotund man with a long, pouty face. He wore the slacks of a businessman but the plain white tank top of someone who likes to sit around the house in their underwear. The homeowner didn’t say a word. He raised the Remington shotgun, placing the end of the barrel directly in front of John’s face and pumped it once.
John put his hands up in defense and, in the most gracious voice he could muster, said, “Thank you?”
15
John wasn’t sure if he was allowed to move. The homeowner kept the barrel of the shotgun aimed at his face. Brian was still on the ground in a similar unmoving, defensive position. The sounds of the dead on the patio continued to rise. John saw several household items nailed over the window next to the door.
“Are you going to shoot me?” John asked.
The short man’s eyes narrowed. He held the shotgun in place for another minute and then slowly lowered it. “You led them here.”
“That’s not his fault,” Brian said from the floor.
The homeowner took a step back, swinging the shotgun toward Brian and then back to John. A figure stepped out into the center hallway toward the front of the house. The homeowner looked and then snarled. “I said stay upstairs.”
John didn’t risk trying to get another look.
“We’ll just get out of here,” Brian said. “We’ll go out the front and be on our way.”
“You can’t,” the homeowner said. “There’s more out front…followed me up to the door this morning when I went out to get the paper.”
“Dan,” a female voice called out from the hall. “Are you okay?”
“Just go upstairs for God’s sake,” he said. “I swear woman—”
“How many shells you got for that gun?” John asked.
Dan eyed him curiously. “Enough.”
“If you could give us some cover fire, we could probably get out the front.” John slowly let down his hands. “You have a car?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Dan said. “I’m not wasting any rounds.”
“Then we’ll take our chances,” Brian said as he got himself off the floor.
Dan shook his head. “I think you’re going to stay right here until we know exactly what’s going on.” He kept the shotgun leveled.
“Haven’t you been watching the news?” John asked. “It’s a viral outbreak.”
Dan chuckled under his breath. “That’s what the government wants us to believe.”
John didn’t like his tone. There was something hidden in his words that reeked of conspiracy theory. “Are you saying you’re not going to let us leave?”
Dan raised the barrel higher and smiled. “Not until I’m satisfied. If the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, I want to keep all of my options open.”
John thought about rushing him, but he wasn’t sure he could get his hands on the barrel of the gun before he pulled the trigger. Dan motioned the shotgun toward the hall and John and Brian obeyed. John walked first as Brian shuffled his feet behind him. They reached the stairs and discovered the woman who’d called out was gone.
“Upstairs,” Dan said.
John did as he was told and midway up the staircase, he caught a glimpse of at least two heads peeking out at him from a cracked door on the second floor. The moment they made eye contact, the door slammed closed. He reached the second floor and came to a stop. “What do you want me to do now?” The frustration came through in his voice. “This is ridiculous.”
“Go around the railing to your left,” Dan said. “The room at the end of the hall.” He directed them into a small bedroom, and the décor acknowledged there was a little girl in the house they had not yet seen. Dan motioned his eyes at the lone window. “Look.”
John approached the window and looked down over the front yard. Their predicament became instantly clear. He counted at least ten walking corpses milling around the front door and bay window. A scan out over the neighborhood revealed how widespread the problem had become. Down several streets in the housing tract, the all-too-familiar lumbering walk of the dead was apparent. The sound of broken glass pulled his attention to a neighboring house, but he couldn’t see far enough out the window to be sure where it was coming from. The shrill of a woman’s scream came next, and it continued for several minutes, until everything was silent.
“Going outside isn’t the best idea,” Dan said.
John pulled his head back inside the window and turned to face the homeowner. “That should be my decision to make. You really think this is the beginning of the end?” He risked a step closer to Dan. “The police will be in here in no time and all this will be under control. Do you really want to go to jail over something like this?” He stopped himself, trying not to come across too offensive. “All I’m trying to say is we should be working together. I have a wife and kid. They need me to get back home.”
Brian sat down on the bed and the fear in his eyes spoke volumes. John knew he wouldn’t be able to count on him if the situation came to a fight. He decided he would take the first chance he had to get control of the situation; Brian was on his own. Dan eyed John over a long time, and for a moment John thought the conspiracy theorist migh
t be considering his idea. Dan finally moved, digging around in his back pocket. Any hope at reaching the homeowner ended when he removed a set of handcuffs and tossed them on the bed.
“One on your wrist and one on his.”
John grimaced as he headed for the bed. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
♦
Dan kept them on the bed for another hour. Now, handcuffed to one another, John had to consider how he could use Brian to his advantage. He needed to get back to Angela, and he wasn’t sure what she might do if he didn’t make it home soon. For the moment, he was busy trying to figure out how crazy Dan really was. John was hoping that at some point he would give up on the idea of keeping two grown men as prisoners and that the world in fact wasn’t about to end.
“You’re not going to shoot us,” John said.
Dan smiled but didn’t reply.
“I’m hungry,” Brian said.
“He’s got a point,” John said. “We need to eat.”
Dan looked down the hall at something out of view and waited several seconds before turning his attention back to them. John couldn’t see what was going on in the hall from his vantage point on the bed, but he could hear shuffling feet followed by someone heading down the stairs. Another few minutes went by and the footsteps returned. This time, a sudden outstretched hand through the doorway followed them. The new arrival remained out of view, but the hand was holding a plate with two sandwiches.
Dan took the plate, and the hand and its owner quickly disappeared. He threw the plate and the sandwiches landed in John’s lap. Brian didn’t wait for an invite. John took a bite and tasted the peanut butter as he eyed the front window. Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he stood up and in the process pulled Brian with him.
“Enough of this,” he said. “Just shoot me.” He took several steps toward Dan, egging him on.
The Decaying World Saga Box Set [Prequel #1-#2 & Books #1-#2] Page 12
