by Urban, Tony
Juli aimed her phone at the shape on the floor and saw their daughter. Marcy laid motionless. Her caramel colored hair was turning black and a growing puddle of blood spread out around her head. The omelet pan laid on the floor a few feet away.
“Marcy!” Juli screamed.
She rushed to the girl, and in the process, stepped in the blood. Her feet flew out from under her and she fell hard, catching her sternum on the island. There was a crackling sound like a wood knot popping in a campfire. Then she fell onto the slate floor.
“Don’t,” Mark said yet again.
“Stop saying that! Stop saying ‘don’t’ and tell me what happened to our daughter!”
Juli crawled to Marcy on her knees, making trails through the blood. She rolled her daughter onto her back and saw the girl’s temple was dented in like a discounted can of corn. She shook the girl, who remained motionless.
“Marcy, it’s Mom! Wake up, Marcy! Marcy, wake up!”
She shook her harder and the girl’s head lolled back and forth. “Wake up! Just wake up!”
“She’s dead,” Mark said, his voice flat.
Juli’s head snapped back as she glared at him. “What did you do!” It was an accusation, not a question.
Mark looked away at first, down at his feet. Then he glanced to his dead daughter. Then to his wife.
“She attacked me.”
He didn't seem to realize, but his fingers went to the red gash on his shoulder. “I came out for a pop and I heard her in her bedroom coughing, but not really coughing. It sounded more like choking. So, I went to her room and she was in the bed having a seizure.”
He looked again to the body on the floor. Juli held her daughter’s deformed head in her lap and stroked her wet, sticky hair.
“I ran to the bed and tried to hold her down so she wouldn’t hurt herself, but almost right away, she stopped moving and stopped breathing. I tried to do CPR, but it didn’t work.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why is she in the kitchen? What happened to her head?”
Mark coughed and gagged. He turned back toward the sink, but didn’t make it quite in time and puke splashed over the counters. He retched a second time, then tried to compose himself.
“I left her room. I was going to get you. To call nine one one and tell you what happened, but when I started down the hall I heard footsteps behind me. I thought it was Matt, but when I turned around it was Marcy.
He turned back to Juli, and she’d never seen a look like that on his face before. It was fear and confusion and emptiness all wrapped together and she shivered again.
“I grabbed her and hugged her and told her I was so happy because I thought she was dead, but then she bit me.”
His hand again went to his shoulder and Juli saw the wound looked like it might have been caused by teeth. But that couldn’t be true. Marcy wouldn’t bite someone. Who does that?
“I shoved her away, but she came right back, biting at me like an animal. So I pushed her away again and ran out here.”
His eyes seemed to glaze over and Juli thought he might cry. She’d only ever seen him cry once before, and that was when she told him she was going to leave him after she found the BJ video on his phone. He cried like a baby then. But he didn’t cry now. He just stared off into space.
“Mark? Tell me what happened.”
“What?” He looked around the room, lost for a moment, then caught sight of his wife and dead daughter. “Oh. She got me again in the kitchen. She grabbed me and kept… biting…”
He stopped again. Sweat covered his forehead. “Biting…” he repeated as he scratched at the wound. His fingers dug into the red matter up to his knuckles.
“What are you doing? Stop it!”
Mark pulled at his skin and the wound grew and ripped all the way to his nipple. “Bite.”
His hand dropped away from the gash and blood dripped onto the floor. He took a step toward his wife.
“Mark?”
He stopped walking and started running at her.
Juli screamed, and when he was less than a yard away, she pushed Marcy’s corpse at him. His feet tripped over the body and he did something akin to a pirouette before crashing into the counters and falling to the floor.
As he fell, Juli made it back to her feet, but they were still slick with Marcy’s blood, and she slid on the slate floor like she was trying to walk on ice. She steadied herself against the island, and as she did, her hand brushed the cool grip of the butcher’s knife. She’d asked Matt to put away the dishes, but he ignored her as usual. As her fingers closed around the handle, she was grateful for his carelessness.
Mark was back on his feet, snarling like a wild animal. Their daughter’s blood was smeared across his face, which made his angry eyes seem downright insane, but Juli had no time to take it all in because he dove into her.
The force of his hundred and ninety pounds pinned her against the island and her broken collarbone gave a sharp yelp for mercy. Spittle ran from his lips — he’s foaming at the mouth! She thought — and his head struck at her like a snake. She pulled back and avoided his bite.
Juli held the knife in front of her like Mark was a vampire she was trying to ward off and the knife was a crucifix. Mark dove at her again, and this time, when he did, Juli aimed the blade and plunged it straight into his hungry, gaping mouth.
She felt his teeth shatter and break, and then the perfectly sharpened steel blade sliced through tissue and flesh. Mark’s weight pushed the knife further into his skull and when he landed atop of her, he was motionless. As his body slithered down her own and toward the floor, Juli gave the knife a hard twist, for Marcy.
She ran from the bodies of her dead husband and daughter and her fleeting moment of composure vanished as she remembered her only remaining family member. How was she going to explain this to Matt?
Juli sprinted up the steps toward the second floor, but halfway up the staircase she heard a footfall. She couldn’t let her son see his father and sister bloody and dead on the kitchen floor.
“Matt! Wait there, I’m coming.”
But Matt’s footsteps didn’t stop. All Juli could think to say was ‘Don’t,’ that stupid, meaningless word her husband had repeated, and she didn’t want to say that so she kept running until she hit the top step.
There she saw Matt. He was halfway up the long hall, which ended in his bedroom, but also contained doors to the game room, half bath, and a linen closet. Matt fumbled with the knob to the closet like he’d never opened a door before.
“Matt?” He kept rattling the chrome handle. “Matthew?”
Juli had lost her phone somewhere in the kitchen and the only light in the hall was moonlight spilling through the overhead skylight. Matt was behind the light, immersed in the darkness.
“Matthew!” she yelled louder and shriller than she intended. That got Matt’s attention. He dropped his hand from the doorknob and came to her.
It took three slow steps until he stepped into the light of the moon. As soon as that blue glow lit up his face, Juli saw the same blank nothingness that had overtaken her husband’s once friendly gaze just before he attacked her. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt so lightheaded she might faint.
She wanted to faint. She wanted this to be a dream. And if it wasn’t, she wanted to die. She’d thought losing her family’s love was the worst thing to happen to her, but tonight was exponentially worse.
Matt passed through the moonlight and faded back into the abyss as he came toward Juli. Part of her, a large part, thought she should just let whatever was going to happen, happen. The only thing that snapped her out of that mind-set was remembering Mark rip his own skin off his chest and lose his humanity right before her eyes.
She didn’t want to live. She wanted everything to be over so she never had to think about this unimaginably awful night again. But she didn’t want to be one of these monsters, either.
Matt was only a step away and she could hear a deep, rattling groan spill from
his slack jawed mouth. He clumsily swung at her, and Juli took a step back to avoid his hand. She turned and fled down the stairs, and as she neared the front door, she heard Matt topple down them. She didn’t look back.
Juli grabbed the keys to Marcy’s Audi SUV off the stand in the foyer. Her own minivan would be locked in the garage, but Marcy always parked in the drive. She ran into the night and it was only when she felt the dewy grass under her feet that she realized she was still barefoot. Barefoot and wearing only a cream, silk nightgown that just happened to be covered in blood.
Juli Villareal had a walk-in closet larger than most people’s bedrooms and bursting with designer clothes, but she couldn’t bear thinking about going back inside to get them. That life was over and, as she remembered some old book title proclaiming, she could never go home again.
Chapter 39
Wim sat atop the gentle hillside that overlooked the farm when he heard the gunshots. From that vantage point, it all looked small and unimportant. He ran his fingers through the lush, green clover that covered the ground and which grew right up against the granite gravestones. One was for his parents, the other for his maternal grandparents. Both were simple, containing only their names, dates of birth and death, and “Beloved Mother” and “Beloved Father.”
Wim always thought he’d be buried on that hill, too, presumably with a marker reading, “Beloved Son,” but now he doubted that was true. He didn’t even know if there was anyone left to bury him when his end came.
In the days after he cleaned out the town, he ventured into the surrounding farmland. He destroyed more than three additional zombies and hadn’t found a single living person. He remembered an old movie with Vincent Price where he played a scientist left alone in a world overrun with vampires, and that’s how he was feeling. Only the vampires were zombies, and he wasn’t a doctor. And he knew he couldn’t do this for years on end.
Wim pulled a handful of clover from the ground, spread them out in his palm and sorted through them.
“I wish you were here to tell me what to do. I never did like making decisions on my own.”
All the clovers were of the three leaf variety, and he dropped them back onto the ground. As he squeezed together another fistful, gunshots echoed in the distance. There were four in all and they came from the north.
Ramey and Stan barreled down a two lane highway, which was void of moving vehicles. Every few miles they came across an abandoned car or truck, but they were easy to avoid. Stan had proved to be an excellent navigator as he kept them away from the cities, but still moving toward the West Virginia star on Ramey’s father’s map.
They’d been on the road about five hours when Ramey noticed Stan squirming in his seat and chewing his bottom lip like it was beef jerky. When he started squeezing his thighs together, her suspicions were confirmed.
“Need a bathroom break?”
Stan flashed a shy grin. “I’ve gotta piss like a racehorse.”
Ramey pulled onto the curb. Trees lined the road on both sides. “The world is your toilet, Stan.”
Stan hopped out of the truck and made a beeline for the cover of the woods. Ramey decided it was a good time to exercise her cramping calves. The truck was a beast, capable of going almost anywhere, but she had to stretch to reach the pedals and she was feeling it.
She bounced up and down on the pavement, shaking out the stiffness from her muscles and joints. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She also felt a tingling pressure in her own bladder and thought she may as well make full use of the stop.
“Hey, Stan, I’m gonna pop a squat, too!”
She headed to the trees on the opposite side of the road. There, she ducked behind a good-sized oak, dropped her pants, and did her business.
As Ramey zipped up, she heard the first gunshot. She didn’t even button her jeans before running out of the woods. Two more shots thundered before she reached the road. When she broke clear of the trees, she saw two dead zombies lying across the dotted white line that divided the lanes. Then she saw Stan sprawled out on the pavement a few yards away.
A bearded zombie in a blue plaid shirt knelt over him and dined on his neck. Arterial blood spurted from the wound and dyed the zombie’s gray beard scarlet.
Ramey passed the two fallen zombies. One had a hole in its cheek. The other a bullet wound in its chest and another through its left eye. Stan’s silver pistol glinted in the sunlight a yard from where the lumberjack zombie was making him its lunch. Ramey had lost her appetite.
“Oh, Stan,” she said as the zombie took an extra-large bite that ripped out the trucker’s Adam’s apple.
The zombie glanced back at her but didn’t leave his meal. Ramey knelt down and picked up the gun. She could still feel Stan’s warmth on the grip.
She’d never fired a revolver before, but she’d seen it happen often enough on TV and she pulled back the hammer. She was only four yards from the zombie, but took her time and aimed for the back of its head. She shot the gun, and the recoil was so strong and unexpected that the revolver flew out of her hands and clattered to the ground behind her. In front of her, the zombie dropped on top of Stan and didn’t move.
She picked up the gun again and started for the truck when the world went out of focus and she lost all the strength in her legs. She fell straight down on her behind and sat there in a fog.
Wim had the windows rolled down as he drove, so the fifth shot came through loud and clear. That one was close. He estimated within a mile and sure enough, he soon came upon carnage on the roadway.
Four dead bodies laid on the gray asphalt. Nearby sat what his Mama had always called a redneck pickup truck. Not far away a girl, who looked to be around twenty, sat Indian-style in the road.
When Wim stopped the Bronco and climbed out, he saw she was holding a revolver in her lap with the barrel aimed at her face. She stared at the gun like a snake that had been hypnotized by a flute and she didn’t react to Wim’s presence until he spoke.
“You all right, Miss?”
Ramey snapped out of her daze and looked toward him. Wim saw she wasn’t twenty-something. She might be close, but she still had the look of a high school girl, not a college adult. Not that he’d ever been to college himself. Her alabaster skin was almost void of color, which made her deep, chocolate-colored eyes stand out. Her pale, pink lips had a perfect Cupid’s bow and she opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything.
“Are you okay?”
Ramey blinked a few times, then looked back down at the gun.
“Why don’t you give me that, Miss?”
Ramey's pretty eyes darkened with mistrust. “I think I’ll hold on to it.”
Wim took a step toward her. She pulled the gun closer to herself, but the barrel was still pointed in, not out, so he wasn’t overly concerned.
“An empty revolver isn’t of much use, but you do whatever you please.”
Ramey looked into the barrel, squinted. “How do you know it’s empty?”
“I heard four gunshots back at my farm. Heard another while driving.” He pointed toward the gun. “My eyes aren’t quite what they used to be, but that there looks like a Ruger Blackhawk, and they only hold five rounds.”
She looked again at the gun. “Maybe I reloaded. Maybe I put in another bullet for myself.”
Wim saw her eyes were ringed red. “Maybe you did. That would be a shame, though.” He took slow, small steps toward her as he talked.
“Why?”
“‘Cause up until ten minutes ago, I was thinking I was the only person left alive in the world. Now I know there’s two of us. I’d hate to see that go back to one again.”
Ramey wiped her eyes. “I killed my mom yesterday.” Her face looked more alert than he’d seen so far. “Well, she killed herself. Then I killed her again.”
Wim, who had loved his mother more than himself, more than anyone, couldn’t imagine anything so horrible. He squatted down in front of the girl and saw she was on
the verge of being beautiful. Probably would be already if the shell shock was gone.
“I’m real sorry to hear that.”
Ramey nodded. “Thanks. Have you killed anyone?”
Wim’s eyes broke free from her questioning gaze. “Yep.” He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask. “I have plenty of ammunition if you want.”
Ramey handed over the revolver. “Okay.”
Behind her, Wim spied a dead man in the road push another dead man off itself. The one moving had its throat ripped out and Wim could see the exposed and partially eaten trachea. Its mouth gaped open.
Her back turned, Ramey saw none of this. That’s for the best, Wim thought.
The zombie noticed them and shambled toward them.
“Why don’t you go over to my Bronco and get a box of .45 shells. They’re in the back seat. It’ll be a yellow box and they’re marked.”
Wim reached out and she took his hand and let him help her to her feet. She was light as a feather and bounced a little when he pulled her up, and that made her smirk. He didn’t see that because he looked past her, to the zombie who used to be Stan the truck driver.
Ramey moved by Wim on her way to his Bronco, and as soon as she was one step past him, he raised the Ruger and fired a round into the zombie’s head. The bullet caught him on the right side of his forehead and a small burst of blood shot out like water from a drinking fountain.
Ramey spun around in time to see Stan hit the ground. She looked from her former companion to Wim. “I thought you said it was empty.”
Wim half-smiled. It felt good to smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done so. “That might have been a fib.”
“I’m gonna have to keep my eye on you.” Ramey, to his surprise, smiled back. Fire had returned to her eyes and along with it, some color to her face. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“My name’s Wim.”
“What kind of name’s ‘Wim’?”
“Actually, it’s William. But when I was little, I tended to mumble.”
