Dan glanced to the black Chevelle and shook his head.
“Rode her trike right into the side of it,” he said slack-jawed, gesturing with his gun towards a long scratch now decorating the driver’s door. “Car show guy’s probably rollin over in his grave right now.”
Wendy frowned at him and leaned her head to the right. “Really?”
“What?” he blinked.
“Um, first of all, who cares about the stupid car?” she asked. “You can get any car you want now, and second of all, we didn’t bury the car show guy. Remember?”
Dan turned back to the little girl and finally holstered his piece.
Paul let out a deep breath and scanned the area for more walkers. When he was convinced there weren’t any, he went back inside. Down the hall, he could hear Brock and Cora talking in their master bedroom. He grabbed his duffel bag from behind a thick leather chair in the living room and returned to the spare bedroom, gently easing the door shut behind him. He could still hear Brock and Cora. Mostly Cora, crying and yelling things he couldn’t quite make out. He pulled Sophia’s sweater from the bag and wrapped up with it on the bed, breathing it in and tossed and turned for the next couple hours, unable to fall back asleep. A couple of times he nearly did but jerked back awake with random body spasms, usually when he tripped over something in the onset of a dream. He stared at the ceiling fan above, clutching the sweater and letting his mind run free, which was always a mistake these days.
He was tired of thinking about all of the gloom and doom and tired of trying to think of something else instead. The something else that could never hold his attention very long before it drifted back to the horror of it all anyway. Carla, Matt and Mike, Sophia, his mom, even Gary slipped through his burned out mind. He was tired of them haunting his every waking thought, each taking turns screaming at him louder than the one before.
From the very beginning, complete strangers had died right in front of him on the crazy streets of Des Moines, where it had quickly become every man for himself. He had seen two men cross the street and get flattened by a red F-150 speeding down Hickman Road with three or four of those things in the back bed, trying to hang on long enough to get inside the cab. Those two men were the first people he had actually seen die. Back then he didn’t have time to think about it because Dan was blasting a shotgun out the Jeep’s back windows while Paul dodged walkers on the way to his mom’s condo and Sophia screamed. Now he almost had too much time to think about it.
He rolled over and stared at the floor, glancing to his duffel bag. Then his brow crumpled. He reached out and dug past Sophia’s books and pulled the thick Harry Potter book out of the bag. He squinted at the notebook paper folded in its pages and then noticed two drops of dried blood gracing the cover. His heart began pumping in his ears as he pulled the paper out and recognized her handwriting before even unfolding it. He sat up against the headboard and flattened out the paper.
My dearest Paul,
That sounds romantic, doesn’t it? :)
He smiled seeing an emoticon like that in a handwritten letter. It was so her.
Someone tapped on the bedroom door, startling him.
He dropped the letter to his lap.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Hey Paul,” Wendy said. “Dinner is ready.”
“Okay,” he replied.
Silence took hold. He could still feel her on the other side of the door. He looked down to the letter but waited to read further.
“You okay?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth. “I’ll be right out.”
More silence. He shook his head, anger bubbling inside of him like boiling water.
“Okay,” she finally said.
He listened to her steps fade away down the hall and quickly returned to the crinkled sheet of paper, determined to finish it before anyone else interrupted him.
My Dearest Paul,
That sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? :) You are asleep in the chair across from me right now. I’ve never seen you this tired. You probably won’t even think you fell asleep at all. I’m so sorry for what you will have to go through soon, but I want you to be strong. It’s not your fault! Don’t waste any of your time second-guessing anything, life is too short now to focus on the past. Keep moving.
And please, don’t be bitter. It’s okay to be sad and angry for awhile but find your joy again. Find your sense of humor again. I know it’s in there somewhere, you’re just going to have to look a little harder for it from now on. Keep making people laugh, like you have always done for me. Help as many of them out as you can.
I miss you already and can’t stop looking over at you. I wish I could keep my eyes open longer. I love you so much and don’t want to leave you like this, but I’m so grateful for all you have given to me. You have made me happy, confident, and more awake than I have ever been before. Thank you so much for choosing me! Who knew that when we met, such a moment of literal weakness would lead to a life of such total fulfillment? You have changed me in more ways than you will ever know. Nothing will ever outweigh my blessings.
I will love you always,
Sophia
p.s. Keep living! Things will get better.
With blurry eyes, he folded the letter up and carefully placed the back in the book. He closed it and lightly ran his fingers across the blood stained cover. The nose bleed flashed through his mind. She would leave a note hidden away like that, even on her deathbed. He got up and straightened himself up in the room’s oval mirror on the wall and went out to join the others in the dining room.
It smelled like a Texas steakhouse again. Dan told Paul how Brock had showed him how to unlock a car with a wire hanger and how Brock had killed another steer for one last big supper.
“He was on his own for that part though,” Dan said.
“That is so gross,” Wendy said, scrunching her face up. “How did you do it anyway? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Brock chuckled and kept chomping away on the delicious warm steak.
Cora quietly pushed food around on her plate. Her brilliant green eyes suddenly looked gray and cloudy. There was no doubt whiskey was mixed in with her Coke now, a lot of whiskey. She also wasn’t busying herself with fetching this and that for everyone like she had done the night before. Paul couldn’t tell if she wasn’t talking because she was so upset about little Lindsey or if she was too drunk to form complete sentences. He guessed it was the former since she seemed like a pretty descent functioning alcoholic.
The large forks and knives cut into the meat on fancy plates and seemed much louder than the night before. Paul was glad for the lull in conversation. His mind continually floated back to the letter. Sophia had always hidden notes away like that in his carry-on if he was going out of town for a few days, or she would hide them in his sock drawer or under his pillow if she was visiting back in Milwaukee. Little notes that said how much she loved him and that she was thinking about him and that she missed him. No one had ever done anything like that for him before.
Brock dropped his utensils onto his empty plate with a loud clatter, jolting Paul from his thoughts. He watched the cowboy pull a fat cigar out of his shirt pocket, push his chair back and walk out onto the deck. Eventually, they all followed him outside. Cora stayed behind and cleaned things up in the kitchen, even though they would be leaving here in the morning.
“You tell Cora about the plan?” Paul quietly asked Brock.
Brock tapped an inch thick ash into the ashtray resting on the patio table, where the moonlight glimmered off the tempered glass like it was made of diamonds.
“Yep. And just like I thought, went over like a lead balloon,” he said bleakly, hitting the stogy again and exhaling a cloud of smoke you could barely see in the darkness but could definitely smell. “This is her home. Always has been.”
“I feel so bad for her,” Wendy said, shivering in the cool air that had rolled in with the night.
; “She’ll get over it, eventually. Not much else of a choice in the matter,” Brock said, chortling sourly. He looked over to Paul and smiled in the moonlight. “We stick together and do the right thing, we’ll end up just fine. Always do.”
He snuffed the cigar in the ashtray and leisurely walked over to the cow pen and opened the gate. He stood there for a moment, watching the sleeping cows, then turned and went back inside the house without saying a word. The cows didn’t seem to notice their liberation. Paul couldn’t tell if the ones standing up were asleep or not.
Soon after, Paul went back inside and read Sophia’s letter again. And again.
He woke up at a quarter to three in the morning having to pee like a race horse. Squinting, he carefully stepped around Dan and Wendy, snuggled up together and fast asleep beneath two green blankets on the living room floor. Paul slid into his untied shoes and quietly removed the four planks running across the French doors. He gently unlocked them and stepped out onto into the cool night. The bathrooms had gotten too ripe to use anymore and he preferred to do all the business he could outside in the fresh air.
A thick fog had rolled in and at first he thought his drowsy eyes were just playing tricks on him when he saw the silhouette of somebody standing just beyond the deck in the backyard. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, the silhouette was still there in the moonlight. Paul opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find his voice. His heart began thumping. The shadow stood as frozen as Paul, while a cool breeze chilled him to the bone. The silhouette moved and Paul gasped. His eyes grew to the size of quarters as the thing sauntered towards the flight of deck stairs with that all too familiar hobble. On instinct, he reached for his gun that he had stupidly left lying on the living room floor. He bolted back inside, his blood now pounding so loud in his ears his own footsteps seemed distant. He slammed and locked the doors, grabbed two wooden boards at the same time and set one into its cradle just as a teenage ZIP floated out of the fog and smashed into the glass doors. Paul jumped and dropped the other board to the tiled floor, where clattered around his feet.
“We’ve got company!” he screamed, dashing back into the living room and grabbing his holster.
“What the hell?” Dan asked half asleep.
“They’re on the back deck!” he said too quick, strapping his gun on as fast as possible. Fortunately, he had even practiced that.
Dan paused. “What?”
“They’re on the back deck,” Paul spit out a little slower but not much.
“Oh crap!” Dan said, throwing back the blankets and springing to his feet.
“What’s going on?” Wendy asked, sitting upright like she had just taken a shock from two defibrillator paddles.
The pounding in the kitchen grew louder and more desperate.
“Brock!” Paul yelled down the hall, checking his handgun clip, jamming it back in and returning the gun to its holster.
Glass broke somewhere in the basement and Paul snatched the fallen trooper’s shotgun leaning against the fireplace and made sure the safety was off. It was.
Dan grabbed the other shotgun and did the same thing.
The sound of more glass breaking downstairs drifted up the basement stairs.
“How many are there?” Wendy cried, fumbling with her holster. “Damn it!” she yelled, dropping half of the gun belt, which swung through the air behind her.
“What’s the score, boss?” Brock asked gruffly, tromping down the hallway in white boxers and his trade mark boots while fastening his gun belt at the same time.
Cora’s shiny red robe glimmered in the moonlight cutting through a window as her bare feet slapped against the floor right behind her stirred up husband. Her puffy eyes watched Brock grab a flashlight off the counter and began darting around the room with the beam.
“At least two! One on the back deck and something downstairs,” Paul said, pumping the shotgun one time and sliding back across the living room to join Brock in the kitchen.
Brock lit the teenager up with the long flashlight and drew his Magnum.
The teen had the worst case of acne Paul had ever seen. Big red sores oozed yellow puss down his face onto his black Slipknot t-shirt.
“Don’t shoot out the glass!” Paul said, just as something knocked over and broke downstairs. It sounded like a lamp. His duffel bag in the spare bedroom suddenly flashed through his mind. No time.
“We’ve got the stairs covered!” Dan yelled, with the shotgun snugly into his shoulder and his back to Paul’s.
Wendy held a flashlight in one shaking hand and her new pink gun in the other, both pointed down the basement stairs and ready for action.
Three more of the night walkers drifted out of the fog’s shifting grasp and banged into the glass doors like bugs into a bright light and joined in with the teen’s unwavering pursuit. Paul knew the glass wouldn’t hold much longer. He briefly considered putting the other two boards back across the French doors, but quickly decided they may need to make a break for it that way. Something was already in the house.
He recoiled when Dan fired a booming round down the staircase behind him, sending two uniformed ghouls flying backwards to the bottom of the carpeted steps in a heap. They didn’t get back up but four others quickly stumbled over the firemen and took their place in the dinner line. Wendy began shooting wildly. A few stiffs took hits but rebounded and kept climbing. Three others joined in the rear. They looked like young sisters with the same long red hair and brown freckles.
Paul couldn’t tell if they were freckles or blood spots and turned his attention back to the glass patio doors, which vibrated with each bruising wallop.
“Steady now!” Brock yelled, keeping his gun on the glass doors.
Dan unloaded six more deafening blasts down the stairwell. Then his gun clicked dry.
“I’m out!” he hollered over Wendy’s shots, throwing the gun down the stairs at the advancing intruders and racing into the living room.
Brock stepped around Cora, leaving Paul to guard the deck and began unleashing hell down the staircase. His cannon blasted a decomposing hippy in a tie-dyed t-shirt, sending its long, blond dreadlocks spiraling through the air as it joined the three sisters at the bottom. The pile quickly grew to seven, then eight, and barely slowed down the slugs continuing to climb over. Brock flinched when glass shattered all over the kitchen’s tiled floor behind him as the French doors finally gave. The savages bounced off the one board in place and ripped it from its cradle, but Paul was ready for them. Methodically, he began picking them off with the shotgun, one after the other until he was out of shells.
He threw the empty shotgun to the side, drew his Berretta and took down the next three ZIPs to enter the breakfast nook with five shots. A bald man in a torn Hawaiian shirt got back up and Paul dropped him again with a single bullet.
“There’s too many of them!” Wendy screamed, blasting the fiends still coming up the stairs.
Dan returned with his sidearm and Wendy and Brock began reloading as soon as Dan started shooting.
Cora stood in the middle, terrified. “Let’s get to the cars!” she screamed, with her hands to her head.
“Paul, we can’t hold em off much longer! Let’s go out the back!” Brock bellowed.
“There’s too many!” Paul yelled over the gunshots, ejecting his clip, fishing a new one from his Kohl’s sweat pants and slamming it in.
“We’ve gotta try!” Brock shouted back, blasting a black guy wearing khakis and an orange polo shirt who looked like he had just finished a muddy round of golf.
“Alright! Let’s do it!” Paul said, popping ghouls like tin cans.
“Come on, Dan!” Brock yelled, backing up through the kitchen.
“You guys go! I’ll hold em off for a few more seconds!” Dan said, popping two more slugs in the head, ejecting a spent clip and slamming in another.
Brock and Wendy turned their guns to the shattered glass doors and joined Paul in carving out a path to the deck.
Glass, wood and blood went flying everywhere. Brock grabbed some keys hanging from a hook by the door on their way out.
“You got your keys?” he shouted to Paul.
“I got em!” he said, shooting until his gun clicked dry. He ejected the clip, where it bounced off the chest of what used to be an elderly woman onto the deck floor. He took the last clip from his pocket and popped it in. “Let’s go!” he yelled, inching towards the back steps and tripping over his untied shoe lace. Anger and fear coursed through his bulging veins as he quickly regained his footing.
“Dan, come on!” Wendy screamed without looking back.
“I’m coming!” he yelled through the broken glass doors, slowly backing his way across the kitchen.
Motionless corpses littered the deck’s bloody floor as Paul, Wendy, Cora and Brock carefully stepped over the lifeless bodies, expecting each one to viscously latch onto an ankle at any second. Three more spooks floated out of the fog in the driveway. They unleashed a fury of bullets upon the things, making it unclear who had shot who. Cora shrieked, clutching the back of Brock’s western gun belt with a death grip as they crept forward.
“We’re clear!” Paul said, looking over the deck railing and then back inside the house. “Dan! Let’s go!”
“I’m right behind you!” he yelled over his reports.
“Now!” Paul screamed.
The four dashed down the steps with Dan’s gunshots fading into the background. They spilled out into the yard and slipped around the corner into the driveway, dropping four more corpses that popped out from behind Brock’s Suburban.
“They’re everywhere!” Cora howled, one hand holding onto Brock, the other pulling at her hair.
They tried to take turns reloading so that someone was always shooting, but it was impossible to successfully pull it off, and Cora was right, they were everywhere. Because of the fog, it was hard to see them until the last few seconds and the thought that the things were actually using the fog for cover, briefly whizzed through Paul’s mind and then faded away as he put two more down. Then three. Crumpled bodies littered the cement drive along with dozens of spent casings, shimmering in the moonlight. It smelled like rotten eggs and burnt gun powder.
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 19
