Zombies On The Block | Book 8 | Better Off Dead

by Evans, Mike

  Jake pointed up and she started swimming back to the top of the water. He was headed in that direction when he noticed Mickenzie being pulled down as well. He swam towards her, not trusting the bullets without knowing the science behind it and waited until he was within a few inches to fire two times again. Jake was getting pretty confident that guns were still ridiculously dangerous underwater. However, he was more than content at the thought of some fresh air of his own. He knew though, that with all the years he'd spent in the water he could probably stay beneath only being beaten in this group by the dead, or potentially Trevor, since he ran marathons; Jake typically only ran late. Jake put a hand under her armpit, pushing her up and before he knew it, he realized the pool or at least the top of the pool was getting further away.

  Jake didn’t want to fire wildly behind him. He just hoped before it was too late that there was a chance to fire off a shot. He started realizing he was letting his air out. He wasn’t Aquaman, he thought, and he needed to breathe eventually. When they got further down, he thought he was dreaming. Bullets looked like they were coming straight out from The Matrix as they were coming down. Except by the time he realized what was happening he felt like a dagger had been run across the outside of his arm. Any air Jake had left was immediately gone as he tried to scream, a useless and impossible feat underneath the water. It definitely brought him back around as soon as that happened. The pressure that was on his shirt also disappeared and he began kicking with what he had left to get back up to the top for some well-deserved, much needed air.

  When he finally got to the top, he saw Michael looking as nervous as he’d probably ever seen someone before. Jake realized the pain hadn’t gone away and when he looked over it appeared like someone had quite literally unpeeled two inches across his bicep. Emily was crawling out of the water, depleted physically, emotionally, and in any other way which she could think of. She was absolutely terrified all at the same time when she realized Jake hadn’t followed her. If there was one place she wasn’t worried about her son, it was in the water. He didn’t care about being an athlete in any way at all, but that kid could swim like a fish. But when she saw the wound on his arm, she thought she was going to lose her shit and that her heart had broken.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Jake, Jake, are you alright, are you alright?”

  Jake put his good arm up on the ledge and his gun in its holster. Michael and Trevor had finished those off that were on the outside perimeter of the pool. Mickenzie heard the worry in her voice and nurse Mickenzie took over immediately. Mickenzie completely understood the mama bear instinct going on with Emily as she had already hurried over to Jake and pulled him the rest of the way out of the water. She screamed when she saw the wicked wound on Jake's arm. She was thankful he was alive, thankful he was there, and locked a laser eye on Michael like he never had before witnessed. Emily screamed pointing at Jake's arm and she pulled him the rest of the way out, holding him, kissing his forehead and head and cheek, squeezing him until it hurt and yelled, “Is this a gunshot wound, is this a goddamn gunshot wound? He's thirteen, Michael; he should not have a gunshot wound on his arm or anywhere, for that matter. His body was unscathed for the most part and by god it should have stayed that way, period. What in god's name is he doing here in the first place, there's a fucking zombie apocalypse going on, hell has been fucking unleashed on society, he should be at home, you should be safe and locked away and taking care of…”

  “Mom it’s okay, I'm going to be okay, I'm here saving your butt. That's all, if I was home, you'd be dead, and right now trust me, you don't want to be at our house. We had to escape with like all the kids on the block. We had to go out my window and then jump up to the garage and then we got down into Amber's SUV.”

  “So, everyone's okay?” Emily asked.

  Jake nodded, shrugging not trying to bring up the obvious saying or about Rylan, “I mean with the exception that I'm shot, yeah everything's peachy. “

  “I don't think that you get to be a smart-ass to me when you show up with a gun wound!”

  “I didn't actually show up with the gun wound. I acquired it here.”

  Mickenzie knew that they probably needed to get moving sooner than later and screamed, “Could the two of you shut up, please! I need to wrap his arm and at some point, he's going to need stitches and a tetanus shot and peroxide, and well, he's going to get the best treatment that I can offer because they just saved us. Not that I wouldn't give him top notch Mickenzie nurse service either way.”

  Michael just stayed quiet and they went back to the doors, seeing that they had effectively just rung the dinner bell from hell, letting a spree of gunfire go off like that. Michael said, “You can yell at me later, Emily, I promise, but we need to get the fuck out of here. The dead are coming and there is no shortage of them on their way here.”

  Emily stared at the water, still seeing plenty of hands reaching up towards them no depth perception to be found, it would seem. She asked, “Please don't tell me we're going to get back in the goddamn water?”

  Trevor was already saying no and pointing to the doors. Mickenzie was busy wrapping Jake's arm as fast as she could. Mickenzie was quite impressed with the Mr. tough guy act that he was putting on and said, “We already tried the door over there to the stairs. It's locked. The only way back out is to go through the doors.

  Trevor's response was short and simple and nonverbal. He showed her the rifle Jacob handed off to him, firing three shots across the pool into the glass, making it explode and shatter. Trevor didn’t care about the noise. He already had their undivided attention. Trevor didn't want to sound like a complete loser but being a badass in real life as a dad of two, husband of one, and a full-time worker at a factory job did not come often. He smiled, saying, “Looks like the doors open now.”

  Jake, who should have been more ready to pass out than be sarcastic, said, “Wow, even in a zombie apocalypse you dads can find a way to sound like total nerds.”

  Michael ran around the pool, getting Jake up to his feet. He acted like he was going to carry him, and the not completely light Jake pushed him off. Michael said, “Are you going to be able to walk? Are you going to be alright?”

  “I guess so long as I’m able to use my feet to walk on and not my arms I’m going to be okay.”

  “Jacob Patrick, quit being a smartass. Michael Peterson, if you ever shoot another one of my children, you won’t have to worry about having the ability to have what you need to give Maren a sibling...do you understand me?”

  Michael thought about that being cut off and didn’t think that sounded all that amazing. He kept a few feet further from Emily and the group made their way up the steps, not wasting any more time. Trevor put some pool chairs in front of the glass door opening, hoping it’d be enough to let them get a head start and at the same time, keep them from being seen when they made it into the area.

  When they made it to the top of the steps, Michael looked left and right, aiming where he looked. Jake had very quickly realized he should not try and baby his left arm because when he touched it...it hurt like a son of a bitch. He got his pistol back out looking around as well, listening, trying to differentiate the noises coming from downstairs, from upstairs. He was fairly sure that he’d determined it safe for the moment.

  Emily asked, “Okay, so we are away from the dead, which is great and all, way better than getting pulled down to the bottom of the pool...a second time, and risk getting killed. But now what?”

  “My truck’s outside. We can go from there. We can shimmy down…”

  “Shimmy, oh my god, that just sounds like you couldn’t have put any less thought into what you are wanting to do. You came here to keep us alive, right, so maybe let's put a little more thought into things. Can we do that?” Mickenzie asked.

  “We don’t have a lot of options,” he replied.

  Trevor was watching the stairway saying, “Can we use our indoor voices please? You see there’s a whole bunch o
f zombies down there and I’m thinking they want to kill and eat us. So, just a thought.”

  Jake walked to the window, trying to see how far down it was. He cringed thinking of that jump and wondered if there’d be some sort of ladder up on the roof that they might be able to climb down. If it meant getting out of there, then it was worth a shot. A sick feeling came across him as the realization that Michael had left his truck keys in his pickup. Those truck keys were now becoming useful for someone that was not them...not any of them. Emily saw that a group of construction workers were piling inside of the cab and those less lucky were stuck with the bed. Something none of them looked overly excited about. They were armed and she was confident if losing the truck meant staying here that they’d be more than happy to do whatever they needed to so they could leave this hell.

  Michael and Jake were both aiming down at the truck, but they were already punching the gas. There was no question in her mind that they were going to fire, but by the time they were ready, the truck had already backed up far enough and around a building that they no longer had the option to shoot at them.

  Michael’s shoulders slumped in defeat. It’d broken his heart when he first had been made to scratch up his truck, but now having a bunch of assholes stealing it was his breaking point. Mickenzie could see the inner dialog which he was suffering from. She patted him on the shoulder and said, “If we can get out of here then we can go out to Dewey Ford and you can pick out whatever truck makes your heart happy. Hell, pick out a few of them if you want.”

  “Well, we probably best get out of here then, right?”

  “Yeah, it’d be nice to get home...or at least close to it. Given it doesn’t look like a bag of crap.”

  Michael was thinking of everything that had happened to the house in such a short time and wasn’t excited about her knowing what it looked like. The good news was that with Maren not at home they would completely bypass it. Michael checked his phone, trying to get an idea of where they should go once they found a way to get out of here.

  Jake asked, “Hey, did Amber and Molly get somewhere safe?”

  Michael was going to respond when the door from the floor below burst open. The dead threw it off its hinges. Michael walked forward trying to stand in the stairwell. The problem with those that feel no pain, also have no fear. They charged the two trying to stand in the way of them. Both seemed almost as if they’d forgotten the fact they were protecting themselves as much as everyone else. Jake looked around wild-eyed trying to see what options they had. The step off the ledge was a killer, but he did notice the ornate walls were as close to an escape option as they were going to have. Emily said, “What is it, Jake?”

  Jake was going to answer when he saw a bullet ridden truck that once had been clean enough and shiny enough to be only his grandpa’s. Jake screamed with the kind of excitement that only came from a victorious video game session. Emily actually felt hope just from the rare excitement in his voice.

  Jake said...

  Chapter 15

  Molly was holding Ruby so tight the poor girl whimpered. She wasn’t trying to do a bone crushing squeeze, but everything about today had been the scariest of her life. A common theme, she thought, was that she just wanted this Monday from hell to end. However, if she awoke to a zombie apocalypse then that was not going to make anything better about Tuesday. “Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to squeeze you so tight. I’m just a little terrified at the moment.”

  Ruby crawled up so she could straddle her mom and decided pretty quickly that it was not for the best. She saw the horde that was chasing after the SUV and didn’t feel any more confident about anything. The dogs also saw this and between the four of them sounded like a howling orchestra of hounds doing their best to try and keep their humans safe. Unfortunately, all they were doing was giving the dead a reason to chase them and the babies a reason to cry. Amber felt like her head was going to split open. She probably couldn’t have been more stressed out if she was giving birth on a tightrope. Something which probably wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  Molly was not trying to be a backseat driver. This, she felt was warranted given the fact she could see Amber was close to doing sixty miles per hour and they did not have very far to go at all. She said, “Where are we going? Did you want to go to Brent's, or do you think we should go to…”

  Amber answered the question with actions not words. She pushed both feet down on the brake and everyone in the SUV felt the force of the vehicle coming to a stop.

  The dogs yelped as the four of them collided in the back of the storage area. Lilly got up on the back of the seat post stop and looked to see how much time they had. There was no time, the dead had not given them enough time to get much of a lead. When she turned back around in her seat, she realized it wasn't any better given the state that they were coming from the back of Brent and Marsha's house too.

  When Amber had slowed down just enough she punched the gas again, fish tailing the SUV and headed directly into Brent's garage realizing the more kids she could get to where they needed to be, or at least to their parents, the better off everyone would probably be. Amber watched as the garage door came down much faster than expected. She was quite concerned that they were going to make it in and that would be that.

  Lilly said, “It looks like Brent unhooked the garage. I saw his belly as he jumped up grabbing the edge of the door and pulling it down as quickly as possible.”

  A much-needed sigh of relief washed over them. Amber took her hands off the wheel and could see how badly they were shaking. She got her babies safe, she thought, or at least temporarily did. Now, she just needed her husband to get his ass home. Everyone exited the car after Brent and Karen opened the back doors.

  When Brent saw Haley, he scooped her up, not giving her a chance to let her feet touch the ground. Brent squeezed his daughter, rubbing his hands through her blonde hair saying, “Oh my God, I love you! I'm so glad you two are okay. Rylan, Rylan get out here and see me, come on come Rylan.”

  He could tell from the mood of the people that something not good was going to be his answer. Haley as well didn't replenish his faith that his only son was okay. She whispered in his ear, “He didn't make it, daddy. I'm sorry, those things got him.”

  Brent squeezed the only thing he had left in this world even tighter. He just didn't think he would ever feel this empty and dead inside. Brent knew that he needed to be strong for Haley, but at the same time, he needed a few minutes to get his shit together. Karen came up from behind, rubbing his shoulder. She didn't want to say that it was going to be okay because it was it wasn't going to be today or tomorrow or even the next day after that. That much loss would not be easy for anyone to deal with. She'd seen how he interacted with his kids and he wasn't the type to say that he had to babysit; he knew those kids were his responsibility and he loved every minute of it.

  Amber helped the rest of the kids that needed assistance out of the SUV. The dogs poured out, running in circles, barking at each other. That lasted about a second before she clapped her hands and the dogs raced off inside of the house. She took a moment before realizing there was no shortage of the dead out there trying their damnedest to get in. They were pounding on the door, fingers trying to reach under and started to lift the door up. Amber raced over to it jumping on one of the handles pushing it down pinning their fingers beneath and pushed the bar to lock the door in place so that they would not be able to get their way in.

  Karen walked over, figuring she should probably introduce herself to Molly and Amber. She said, “Hi, I'm Karen. I work with Brent, and we've been doing our best to do whatever we can to get home for the last few hours.”

  Amber didn't want to ask the obvious stupid question but said, “Hi, Karen, I’m Amber, this is Molly. Dumb question but, why aren't there any cars in here then?”

  Karen snorted, thinking about how they had made it home and the fact that they had was somewhat comical. Karen replied, “We took our work tractor home
. We were going to try and go back and get our cars, but we had our work radios going and it basically sounded like anything that you could imagine was happening was happening there at the same time. So, we decided to just take the tractor and we've just been driving through random fields until we got here. It was not ideal by any means. We did have three but that just didn't end up working out unfortunately.”

  Molly said, “Well, it's nice to meet you, Karen. Do you know if Brent has heard from Marsha yet, if she's on her way home?

  “No, well yes, he did talk to her but she's not on her way home. She also didn't make it.”

  The defeat in both women's facial expressions let Karen know just how close these people on the block were. Amber wasn't sure if she felt worse for Brent or Haley given the fact she knew how hard it would be to try and live without her own mother. The group stood for a few minutes, awkward in silence, not sure what they should do or say. There was no perfect answer and giving Brent a few minutes wasn’t going to be the end of the world...or was it, she thought. Amber asked, “Is his house locked down? Is there anything else that can get in through like a broken window or anything?”