COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES

by Sean Thomas Fisher

  COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES

  Sean Thomas Fisher

  Copyright 2010 by Sean Thomas Fisher

  Published by Bump in the Night Publishing

  Thanks to everyone at Bump in the Night Publishing and a very special thanks to Esmeralda Morin.

  Have I not commanded you?

  Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified;

  do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

  Joshua 1:9

  Preface

  It had to be the flu-shots.

  He hadn’t gotten one. None of them had.

  Not that it mattered now.

  Chapter One

  A high-pitched scream went off in the distance like a noon whistle, slicing through the falling snow outside. On cue, they all stopped chewing. Their wide eyes silently met for confirmation they weren’t the only one who had just heard that. It had been two days since one of those ghastly screeches and so far it had never been a good omen. The sporadic cries seemed more like warnings than anything else. Ready or not... From what Paul had seen back in Des Moines, those things didn’t care about anything other than satisfying that jagged sweet tooth.

  “Did you hear that?” Dan asked, his ears nearly poking through his ski cap.

  No one answered him, deciding to return to their so-called dinner instead, too tired to do much else. Whatever the reason for the shrieks, they were enough to give a guy goose bumps if the cold hadn’t already beaten them to the punch. The snow covered farmhouse was old and drafty, caught in the clutches of Iowa’s snowiest winter in ninety-nine years, which is what meteorologist Ed Wilson had said on the local news just a few days before all hell broke loose. They would have to get to warmer weather and fast, because if the walking dead didn’t get them, the freezing temps would.

  Sophia leaned in closer to Paul on the stained carpet. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this place,” she whispered.

  He cringed. He had been positive they would be okay this far out in the middle of nowhere, like the house they slept in last night.

  He opened his mouth to tell her they would get through this mess, just like all of the other messes before. Five years of marriage, however, made him take another bite of his partially frozen Hostess apple pie instead. Didn’t matter who was right or wrong at this point. They were screwed now and there was no going back.

  Contaminated flu shots or not, Paul knew the scripture warned that in “the last days” the love of the great body of believers will have grown cold. Maybe God had grown tired of his believers remembering to watch The Bachelor and The Real Housewives while forgetting about Him. Paul wondered if He was even up there anymore, if He had ever been to begin with. At this point, he was too pissed to know if he even cared or not anymore.

  Ghostly plumes rolled out his nostrils as he ate with his mouth closed. His unfocused eyes stared at the dusty board games stacked on the lower shelf of a nearby oak bookcase. Even through the dark fuzziness, he knew Scrabble, Yahtzee, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly when he saw them. He snorted, cold breath rushing out his nose like a bronco. Nobody ever won at Monopoly, because nobody ever stuck around long enough to finish. He wondered if this would be any different. For his mom it wouldn’t.

  Carla scanned the many windows with wild eyes, clutching her two young boys on the worn carpet. “Can they get in here?”

  Dan followed her twitchy gaze around the room, his breath floating out in white waves. “I hope not.”

  “They can’t,” Paul lied.

  A silence as deep as the snow outside settled in the room where they sat cross-legged, exchanging nervous glances through hollowed out faces that seemed to change expressions in the flickering candlelight. It had been a long six days.

  Plenty of recorded attacks popped up on YouTube before the power went out six days ago, but Anderson Cooper had been the first to go down on live television. Why he thought he could roam the streets with just a camera man, Paul would never know. This wasn't a revolution in Egypt. Regardless, that's when people had started taking things seriously, but by then it was too late.

  He turned back to the large family portrait hanging above the rustic fireplace, where a man with a brown mustache posed with his wife, a young boy and girl, dressed in their Sunday best from the eighties. Their eyes followed you wherever you went in the living room and Paul couldn’t help but wonder where they had gone.

  “Mom, are they gonna to eat us?” Mike asked, pulling his stocking cap down over his ears again.

  “What? No sweetie, of course they’re not,” Carla said, rubbing the back of his thick coat. “You are the one who needs to eat.”

  “I don’t wanna die!” Matt suddenly wailed, turning on the water works again and plunking his face into his mom’s down coat.

  “Peanut, will you stop? You are not going to die!”

  Paul and Dan traded a quick look.

  Carla’s minivan had run out of gas four hours ago on a snowy rural route road and she couldn’t have been any luckier to have Paul’s Jeep Grand Cherokee come upon them before the stiffs had, luckier than winning the lottery. Now, here in the darkness, Paul felt guilty thinking about how much easier this would be without them. Silence was golden in this world. Besides, this place didn’t have near as much edible food as the last two and the Jeep was a tight fit already.

  “Matt, they have guns,” the eleven year-old bravely reminded his younger brother.

  “That’s right, Mikey,” his mom said.

  “Matt, you know we wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” Sophia said, discreetly brushing a gloved hand against her pink handgun, just to make sure it was still there. “We’ll be playing volleyball on the beach in no time,” she said, flashing him a genuine smile.

  “See? But first you need to eat,” Carla said.

  Squeamishly, Matt pulled his wet face from his mom’s coat and turned to Sophia with an unconvinced look. His tears slowly turned to sniffles as he stuffed another stale graham cracker into his mouth and began crunching.

  “Can we build sand castles?” he asked, spitting a dry piece of cracker onto the carpet.

  Sophia smiled at him. “Sure you can, sweetie.”

  “Can we get boogie boards?” Mike asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Can I have a gun?” Matt quickly followed.

  Sophia’s brow dipped as she opened her mouth.

  “No, you cannot have a gun,” Carla answered for her.

  Matt’s face slumped and he returned to his crackers.

  Dan leaned over to Paul. “Man, I am so stopped up,” he whispered.

  “Great.”

  “I need some Proactive or something.”

  Paul arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean Activia?”

  “Whatever,” he said. “A toilet that isn’t overflowing with frozen turds would be a good start. I don’t know how you do it.”

  Paul snorted and noticed Matt and Mike staring at them with matching looks of disgust.

  “Do you mind? This is a grown up conversation,” Dan said to them.

  Both kids shrugged and went back to barely eating.

  Another guttural scream pierced the bitter air, this time much closer. Paul leaned over and blew out the candles, plunging them into a darkness that smelled like lilacs.

  “I told you,” Sophia whispered.

  “Sophia, those things are never even gonna know we were here. Give it a rest already.”

  The moonlight slipped past the dingy curtains, lighting up one side of her concerned face. “I’m just saying, we have kids to think about now, Paul.”

  He raised his head to the ceiling and released an exhausted sigh. This was the last thing they needed to be arguing ab
out right now. Right now, they just needed to eat and be quiet.

  He turned to the family portrait again and shook his head, knowing he’d never get used to hiding out in a different house like this every night with the rotating smells and furniture and pictures of the people who used to live there. Their lives eternally frozen in time, a continual reminder of the way things were and the way things would always be, accompanied by the perpetual sense of discomfort that comes with unfamiliar surroundings. He could never sleep well in a hotel room bed, let alone this. At least in a hotel room nobody came pounding uninvited on your door at three in the morning, unless it was security.

  And what he’d give to see some security now. They hadn’t seen a single cop, or even a National Guardsmen for that matter, in at least three days, which was numbing. Almost as numbing as the icy nine-millimeter strapped to his right leg.

  Sophia shivered against him beneath the musty smelling blanket and tried to hide it. Two weeks ago, she had been booking appointments in high heels at a high-end salon, today she walked with a little pink gun strapped to her lower right thigh. Two weeks ago, she blew a gasket if a spider showed its hairy face in the bathroom; today she had three kills and counting.

  Paul snapped his head over to a small rocking chair in the corner of the room. It was suddenly moving, like a child had just taken a seat in it. His mind raced. What now, poltergeists? He’d always thought those ghost hunting shows with their night-vision green hues were a joke. Nothing ever happened, nothing that a small mouse or the creak of some old wood resting on a cracked foundation couldn't explain. But these days, anything seemed possible. He waited for a young girl’s pale face to gradually appear in the chair as it rocked.

  Carla and Dan screamed when the sloppy fist pounded on the front door, causing everyone to jump. Matt and Mike bear hugged their mom, frantically trying to crawl inside her skin like terrified baby kangaroos.

  Paul set his pie down on the coffee table and grabbed the twelve-gauge lying next to him on the floor. He and Dan coolly rose to their feet, the shotguns gliding into their shoulders in an eerie, choreographed symmetry.

  Five days ago, a knock like that would’ve made him drop that apple pie on the dirty old floor like a scared little school girl after a grass snake crossed her path in the park. But now, he had set it down on the coffee table, saving it for later, confident there would be a later.

  The second knock made them jump like they’d just taken the same fifty-volt shock from a car battery. It was a cop-knock from hell and a sure sign their cover was blown. The candles whisked through Paul’s mind while the front door rattled with each bruising wallop. It wouldn’t hold forever. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been any wood conveniently lying around to board up the windows with, let alone a hammer and nails. This was no movie.

  The knocks on the door abruptly subsided.

  Their heavy breathing made the only sound in the musty, moonlit room.

  “Looks like just one of em, but, man, he’s a big one,” Dan whispered, peering out the front door’s peephole with one eye open.

  “Who is it?” Paul asked, gripping the shotgun as Sophia eased behind him, drawing her pink nine millimeter.

  “Ted Larson, from up the street,” Dan said.

  Paul’s face wrinkled. “Who?”

  “How the heck should I know who it is!” Dan blurted, just as another huge blow to the door caused him to flinch so badly, it was almost funny.

  “Open it!” Paul said, taking aim with the Mossberg.

  “On three,” Dan agreed, creeping back to the worn door knob.

  Normally, they didn’t waste ammo if they didn’t have to but this guy would eventually get inside. Plus, it wouldn’t be long before he attracted others.

  “One, two,” Dan counted as a window broke out in the kitchen behind them.

  This time Sophia screamed.

  “Open it!” Paul yelled.

  Dan yanked the front door open and the thing immediately slithered through the doorway, slobbering and snarling. Its dark blue ‘Rick’s Heating and Cooling’ coat was bloody and torn with bloated hands reaching out its long sleeves. The meat hooks clawed at the frigid air, desperate for purchase, and Dan was right, he was a big one. Had to be over six-feet tall and three hundred pounds, yet moved like he was half that. Its beefy legs made the lamps shake.

  Paul unloaded a shell on it right away to keep most of the mess out on the front porch. They still might spend the night here. He watched the ghoul slide across the porch on its back and bounce down the front steps head first, leaving its only shoe behind in the doorway. Dan scanned the porch for more decaying visitors, his gun leading the way. Carla wrapped an arm around each of her boys on the carpet as Sophia put her back to Paul’s to cover whatever was coming in through the kitchen window. To her chagrin, Paul had insisted they start practicing these S.W.A.T. like moves after they raided the gun store in Des Moines on day one.

  “Look out!” Carla shouted.

  Sophia’s body jerked as she sunk a single round into the slight kid creeping into the living room from the kitchen. Paul whirled around so fast his leg bumped the coffee-table and knocked the apple pie onto the filthy carpet. The last one too.

  The kid flew backwards onto the yellowing floor and stopped moving. Matt bawled louder than ever, reaching the boiling point for eight year-olds. His brother Mike just sat there, looking like he had just seen a ghost. And he had.

  “Matt, it’s alright, buddy!” Paul said, gliding across the living room as Dan shut and locked the front door.

  “I wanna go home!” Matt blubbered.

  Carla hugged him tightly and told him everything was going to be okay, a blatant lie.

  Paul and Sophia stepped over the dead boy’s body on the linoleum floor, careful not to slip in the pooling blood. Paul looked down to the kid’s John Deere sweatshirt as an older woman with long gray hair pulled herself through the broken window above the kitchen sink, folding her thin limbs through like a poisonous spider. He swung the shotgun up at her and she released a horrific shriek, baring her broken teeth and hurting his ears. He winced and pulled the trigger, blasting her back outside into the cold night.

  He glanced back to the unmoving farm kid. Matt’s cries in the living room seemed to be coming from a hundred miles away. They still might be able to crash here tonight, he thought just as a skinny old man with wrinkled fingers casually began climbing through the shattered window. His tattered plaid button down snagged on a broken shard of glass and Sophia popped him one time through his bald spot, jerking the thing back out into the darkness.

  Matt suddenly stopped crying. They froze and listened to the wind whistling through the busted window.

  “How we lookin out there, Dan?” Paul yelled.

  “We’re clear!”

  Paul dropped his gaze to the poor farm kid lying on the floor. He was so young, probably no older than Matt. He should be home sleeping before a long day of school tomorrow, followed by an afternoon round of sledding with his closest buddies. But look at him now. Sledding had been the last thing on his mind. The frizzy gray haired lady stood back up and reached through the window again, grabbing the edge of the laminate countertop and pulling herself inside. This time Paul took its head off and the thing yanked a piece of countertop with it on the way out. It didn’t get back up.

  Silence followed. Their chests heaved.

  Paul and Sophia slowly looked from the broken window to each other.

  A long rolling breath came tumbling from her mouth. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this place.”

  He cringed and looked back to the dead kid.

  Chapter Two

  “Man, that was one big ZIP,” Dan said, back at the peephole.

  Carla’s face scrunched up. “A what?”

  “A zombie in pursuit,” he said, without turning around.

  “A zom... In pursuit of what?”

  “Us.”

  “But why? Why is this happening?” she asked, looking to
Paul.

  He shrugged his shoulders in the doorway of the kitchen. “Maybe God was tired of us making Kim Kardashian rich and famous.”

  She frowned and turned to Sophia, who didn’t notice. She was too busy staring into the darkened fireplace from a brown recliner covered in dog hair, visibly shaken after shooting the farm boy. So far, it was the youngest one of those things any of them had put down. Probably some neighbor kid who wouldn’t have to do another chore ever again and his parents lying outside in the fresh powder would never have to give the orders. Paul closed his eyes and rubbed his face. These people didn’t deserve this.

  “We should leave,” Carla said, gripping Matt and Mike on the living room’s antiquated brown couch. Both boys were shaking. It was hard to tell if they were cold or scared to death. Probably a little of both.

  Paul crossed over to the front windows again and gently peeled the dingy white drapes back. The bright moon above bathed the snow-encrusted country landscape with an angelic glow. “It looks clear.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here! Not with that... thing in the kitchen,” Carla barked. “Plus the window is broken!”

  “It’s too dark to clear another place tonight. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and more than likely these were the only ones around,” Paul said. “If not, we’ll take off in the Jeep.”

  Dan turned from the living room window with saucer-sized eyes; unconvinced more of them weren’t already inside the house. He reminded Paul of when they had rented an old ranch near Saylorville Lake just after college. It had been the perfect place to quickly launch their trusty old 1978 Mark Twain ski boat, but it hadn’t taken them long to figure out why the place was so affordable. Mice. Dan spotted a couple of the furry little vermin sneaking around the house and started setting traps like he was Freddy on Scooby-Doo. He even bought a cat. Soon the mice, more or less, disappeared. Yet, Dan had always been on the lookout for them. Always thought he just saw something dart across the living room. He was like that now.