It swung for her shoulder just as she moved away from the door and its face collided into it, leaving a spray of rank saliva on the peeling paint.
The final burst of adrenaline Sarah's body could produce flowed through her veins and gave her the alertness and agility to back away from it as it gained its balance and chased her around the side of the house. She fled through the path between two houses and ran along the fences enclosing the backyards on both sides.
Another zombie casually walked by at the end of the fences and saw her. It stopped and blocked her escape, turning for her and boxing her in.
Sarah stopped and glanced at the two zombies approaching her. She held up the hatchet, but they were both the same distance away, and she knew she couldn't fight off one before the other one got to her.
In a split-second decision that she wasn't even aware her brain processed, she tossed the hatchet into the backyard on her right, then she jumped up and grabbed hold of the wooden board on top of the fence. She used all her strength to pull herself up, and somehow, to her great surprise, she was actually rising. Her feet tried to walk up the flat boards, but they kept slipping. The zombie who blocked her exit came up to her and clawed at her ankles, trying to grab one of her feet.
Sarah struggled against it, holding onto the fence for dear life as she wildly kicked her feet out of its grasp. As the second zombie joined in, she kicked out at it and her feet hit it square in the chest, knocking it backward and giving her the final boost she needed to get over.
Her body flipped over the fence and she landed, thankfully, on a mound of dirt in the garden. Her head rolled to the side and looked at the gate in the back fence, but it was closed.
Sarah lay perfectly still and rested as the two zombies banged angrily on the other side of the fence. For all that she had been through that day, she was finally safe for the moment. When she was able to, she got up and walked to the gate, making sure the latch was secure, then she grabbed the hatchet and went up to the back of the house.
There was a sturdy metal door at the top of a few steps, and Sarah prayed. Her hand fell on the freezing metal knob and twisted. It turned and she heaved herself against the door, swinging it inward and revealing the black interior of the house.
She let out a soft cry of joy and she stumbled into a small laundry room, closing and locking the door behind her. She carefully made her way through the dark house, relying on the moonlight coming through the windows to guide her. She walked to the front door and made sure it was locked, then went around to all the windows and checked them as well. Before she felt safe enough to go to sleep, she looked around for some heavy furniture.
There was a long black leather couch in the living room and she slowly dragged it to the laundry room. There was a couple steps leading down to the laundry room from the hallway, and she managed to wedge the couch between the back door and the bottom of the steps, securely barring the entrance.
She shoved a long dining room table to the wide front hall and barely managed to tip it over, sliding its heavy frame against the front door. Sarah headed upstairs and dragged the king-size mattress and the box spring from the master bedroom to the top of the stairs and slid them down. They each crashed into the table and she adjusted them so that their weight was firmly pressed against it. Her barricades did nothing to prevent someone from coming in through a window, but if that happened at least she would hear the shattering glass ahead of time.
She made her way upstairs and found another bedroom to sleep in for the night. It looked like it belonged to a little girl, and the walls and furniture were adorned with dolls and playhouses and other girly things. The walls were painted pink, but in the moonlight, it looked like pale blue.
She stood by the edge of the window. The street below was still teeming with the undead, and they moved like black blips through the darkness. The highway that she'd traveled all day was visible from the second floor, and she watched for any sign of movement.
But everything was quiet. Only the dead roamed through the night; no serial killers. Before she turned in to bed, she watched the zombies awhile longer. Her eyes traced one as it shambled at the edge of a lawn. Then something moved in the corner of her eye.
She looked and it was just another corpse moving about. Her eyes played tricks on her, telling her brain that she saw a man standing in the street staring up at her, but every time she looked, it would just be a zombie stumbling over its own feet. The shadowy figure moved around and around as her gaze did the same, and she just drove herself batty. She gave one last careful sweep across the street and knew that whoever had been following her had turned away miles ago.
Sarah collapsed onto the twin-size bed and fell asleep immediately.
6
Tableau Vivant
The whole night, she tossed and turned in the small bed. A rough and vicious dream came to her, in which she was being attacked by a shadow. She found herself on a crowded street, surrounded by piles of ash in the shapes of humans, standing and posing in horrific ways, as if some terrible bomb had gone off that instantly destroyed any living trace of them and transmuted their bodies into the charred, silty substance. She stood amongst them, lost in the sea of them, staring around. She was being stalked by something, but she couldn't see what it was. It was furtive. As she walked through the rows of dead people, she brushed by one and watched as the slightest touch caused the man, who had his arm shielding his face, to collapse into a gray cloud of lung-scratching dust. But she found she had no reaction to this. As she walked through the crowd, trying to find a way out, the sun streaked across the sky and immediately came to a bright sunset, splashing oranges, reds, and pinks across the landscape. Then it came from behind her when she let her attention slip: a shadow rising up from the earth as if it appeared from nowhere at all. It grew in size until it was taller than a skyscraper. It stalked her without her even noticing until the edge of it fell over her shoulder, causing an anomalous but severely painful feeling. She recoiled and spun around, facing the predator, only to see it grow bigger. She started to run away from it, knocking into ash-humans as she charged through, sending up great clouds of smoky ash to permeate the air. Their faces were twisted into the final horrors that they experienced when the shadow killed them, but still she didn't care about them; they were parts of a world long gone and they weren't relevant anymore. As she ran for the sunset, knowing it was her salvation, she realized that it wasn't a sunset at all, but rather a raging fire, like the whole sky had ignited. The dead people around her erupted into flames and billowed up pillars of jet-black smoke. They now more closely resembled blackened lumber ruined from the blaze, and their pieces collectively formed a house that had collapsed from the inferno. She ran and ran until she realized that there was no end to the maze of the ruins; it stretched on forever. She turned at last to face the looming shadow only to see that the tall behemoth wasn't any such thing: it was the size and shape of a normal man. He walked through the blackened wooden frames, and as he passed each one, the lumber would fall away to either side and more flame would surge up into the air, as if the shadow were the cause of the fire. She suddenly felt a wall behind her and didn't try to move. She knew it was too late. The man came for her, one agonizing step at a time, his entire figure a shifting black mass. The last thing she saw was the face, and she desperately peered into it, trying to find any humanlike qualities. But it was just an empty chasm, blacker than anything she had ever seen.
Sarah shot upward on the bed, leaning over her knees and breathing heavily. Beads of sweat ran down her hot skin and she felt her clothes stick to her uncomfortably.
She found herself in the little girl's bedroom, all the pink and dolls and decorations intact. It was daytime and the sun came through the window, throwing a patch of heat right across her lap. When she realized she just had a nightmare and everything was okay, she relaxed. She let her body fall back down and her head hit the pillow.
Everything felt better, including all her aches and
pains. Her muscles were a little sore, but she knew that she got the rest she needed. Her empty stomach had constricted in the night, thankfully leaving her not very hungry at the moment, but her throat felt like shards of glass were sliding up and down it every time she swallowed.
Sarah got out of bed and made her way to the window, still being careful—especially in the daylight—to keep out of sight. She looked at the streets and the neighborhood below and saw the same group of zombies lazily wandering around. There were fewer in the day now than there had been in the night before, and there were certainly no killers, no flames, and no shadows. Everything was peaceful and she breathed a sigh of relief at finally being safe once again.
She didn't like being out in the country, she decided, and she thought that she would continue along the road, because according to her foggy memory of the map, the more developed outskirts of Raleigh would be coming up soon, and she needed to find somewhere permanent to stay, at least long enough to recuperate for the time being.
Sarah stepped away from the window and searched the room for anything useful to take with her. She had placed the hatchet on a dainty pink nightstand next to the bed, and the juxtaposition of the two was amusing. The closet door slid open on its track and she looked inside, finding nothing but toys and dusty blankets. Sarah came out of the girl's room and checked the master bedroom, followed by the bathroom back out in the hallway.
There were some first aid supplies in the medicine cabinet and she stuffed some things into a plastic bag she found under the sink. She went downstairs and saw that the mattress and box spring were still pressed against the table blocking the front door. She thought of the haunting image of the Navy SEALs' heads lined up and looking their dead looks at her, and she was glad to be away from whatever maniac did that. She walked to the back door where she entered the house and found the couch still wedged between it and the bottom of the steps in the laundry room.
Coming out into the living room, she could actually see everything now in the daytime. An old LED TV hung on the wall and there were four round imprints in a big white throw rug from where she'd taken the couch. She checked the kitchen for food or water, but it was completely empty. Whoever used to live there had probably taken everything and left, or the house had already been looted by other survivors many years ago. Sarah swallowed and her throat scratched again.
A door creaked somewhere behind her.
She jumped and spun around, instinctively leaning back over the kitchen sink. She listened, but everything was silent. The noise came from somewhere around the corner of the kitchen wall, near the living room. She crept across the tile floor and peeked around the wall.
A door stood open at the edge of the living room near the front hall, leading to what looked like the basement. Sarah paused and watched it, confused and scared. It suddenly shifted an inch back and forth again, seemingly by itself, and she jumped again. It took two more times of her staring at it like a scared rabbit peering out at something from a bush before she calmed down. This time, she felt the breeze wafting up from the basement in tandem with the door moving, and she knew there was no one hidden behind the door, using it to draw her closer and waiting to ambush her; there must have been a basement window open, letting in the breeze.
But still, that didn't ease her nerves as a flurry of new questions entered her mind. She hadn't even noticed the basement door the night before when she was going around ensuring all the windows were locked.
Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness. She would have normally thought better of such an idea, but she desperately needed something to drink and would soon need something to eat too. She knew she was just being jumpy and that she needed to check the basement for supplies. She wouldn't be able to travel anywhere for very long as parched as she was, and she hoped beyond all hope that there were stores of food and water in the basement.
She searched the kitchen for some kind of light and found a flashlight that no longer worked, but she also found a long candle and a box of matches in a drawer. She slid open the box and drew one of the tiny sticks, flicking it against the striker. The phosphorous erupted into a tiny flame and she held it to the wick of the candle, watching as the orange fire jumped to it. She shook out the match and returned to the basement stairs, shielding the flame from the soft breeze coming up from the darkness.
Sarah hesitated at the threshold, watching the soft glow emitting from the candle quickly disappear into the darkness. Her throat swallowed that terrible scratchy gulp and she felt the hairs on her skin tingle. She waited, listening for any sound of movement, but there was only silence.
Slowly, one by one, she walked down the stairs, hearing them groan under her weight. She paused again when she got halfway down to hear if anything had shifted from the noise she was making. But once again it was silent. She clutched the plastic bag of first aid supplies as she continued down the rest of the steps into the darkness.
The culprit was a window at the top of the wall in front of her. It had been slid open and the cold, fresh breeze of the morning came in along with the faint edges of the sun's light that did little to illuminate much of the basement. The window was narrow and seemed doubtful that someone would have been able to slip through it, but she kept her wary eyes on it for a moment.
The illumination from the candle she held cut into the darkness where the faint light from outside had faded, and a pale orange danced around boxes, old bicycles, and weight equipment as she passed them. In the darkness, even the innocent candle flame twisted into something sinister as it hid sly shapes roaming around in the cold basement.
When she reached the middle of the room, she saw the fuzzy edges of a table sitting just on the precipice between the light and the dark. She approached it, letting the light encroach upon it and fulfill her ghastly curiosity at the objects that were beginning to take shape.
The table fully came into the reach of the flickering orange flame, and there were two zombies sitting on opposite sides in plastic chairs. Neither of them showed any signs of life, and there were rough gashes all around their necks, like they had been decapitated and then had their heads reattached. One was a male who was dressed in nice church clothes, and he was perched forward with his chin resting on a propped arm. His other arm was outstretched, holding a fresh flower in his hand. The zombie on the other side of the table was a female sporting a long sundress with a blond wig on its head that was about the same length as Sarah's hair. She sat back in the chair lazily with her hands folded up in what looked like a representation of disinterest.
And scratched into the middle of the table was a name: "SARAH".
She dropped the plastic bag of supplies and backed away as her blood ran cold. The hand holding the candle started to shake and the flame flickered dangerously, threatening to go out. Dark shapes moved around in the blackness all around her. Noises came from every direction, closing in on her. She felt chilly breath on the back of her neck and she spun around, dropping the candle and bolting for the stairs. She didn't know which sensations were real and which were imagined, but the killer was in the house with her. And she didn't know where.
She shot out into the living room and rounded the corner to the front hall, heading for the second floor. The heavy objects she blocked the door with now looked like large bricks sealing the exit to a tomb. Sarah clambered up the stairs with only one thing on her mind: the hatchet. Everything else was a blur to her.
She burst into the little girl's room and saw it sitting on the nightstand on the far side of the room, waiting to be used. She rounded the bed to get it, and a hand reached out from below and caught her by the ankle.
Sarah crashed to the floor and her head snapped to the side, trying to figure out what happened.
The killer was lying underneath the bed, long and greasy black hair coming out of his head like stiff wires, and a deranged smile across his face, wider and more demented than a human should have been capable of. In the next instant, he cr
awled his way out from underneath, still holding onto her ankle.
Sarah rolled on the floor and kicked at him, hitting him in the face. His head rolled back and he let out a quiet grunt, but it didn't seem to hurt him, and the smile didn't waver. She frantically kicked her legs like a seasoned swimmer and she finally managed to pry her ankle from his grip. She got to her feet and lunged for the hatchet.
The killer shot to his feet and lurched after her.
Sarah picked up the weapon and spun around, slashing it at him.
He held up his hand to protect his face, and the blade sliced across his open palm, leaving a bloody gash. The corner of his mouth faltered for a moment as he looked at his hand, but he still beamed his insane grin. When he turned his attention back to her, blood dripping off his fingertips, a look of complete horror washed over Sarah's face and she backed into the nightstand.
The killer started to laugh, but it was quiet—more to himself than her—and it came out in a half-giggle, like it was made by an amused child. He slowly walked up to her as she leaned back over the nightstand and against the wall behind it. He held up his bloody hand, making a grabbing gesture as he approached.
Sarah gave him a couple warning slashes and he reached forward each time, like he was trying to catch the blade. When she knew she wasn't deterring him, her instincts told her to throw herself over the bed and try to scramble to the other side of it.
In a swift motion in perfect synchronicity with hers, he sailed over the bed after her, his body gliding through the air like a dolphin leaping from water. She didn't even land on the soft surface before his arms were around her, grabbing at her face and her throat, trying to gain control of her.
The blood from his right hand smeared against her throat as Sarah tried to pry it off. She bucked wildly on the bed as he shoved his bodyweight against her and pinned her down. She coughed as the grip over her throat tightened and she desperately swung the hatchet backward over her head with the power and effectiveness of a gimped chicken wing.
Zombie Apocalypse Series Books 1-3 (Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set) Page 51
