by Won, Mark
I wandered through the city street, wondering at the emptiness of it. No people, no horrors, just empty cars and buildings. Sorta peaceful. I knew it couldn’t last so I was ready when that moaning started up again.
I cast about for the source. It was muffled and hard to spot. Eventually I looked up and saw a zombie at a second story window looking down at me. It kept carrying on like that while I just stared at it. I waved at it and motioned for it to come to me. The zombie wouldn’t do it, though. It didn’t even break the glass. Just like the zombies at the school, it didn’t fancy falling.
Too bad. I would have liked to be able to lead them all off a high bridge somewhere. Maybe make them all bust up their legs from a big fall.
Walking along, I finally managed to see a big cemetery up ahead on the left. It was about time. I checked a street sign and saw I was on White Street, but I couldn’t remember the address. I picked the first house on the block and opened the door, jumping back just in case.
Just an ordinary front room. Brown carpet, brown davenport, big screen TV and a couple of easy chairs. No zombies or blood or anything.
When I searched the place I found the kitchen door had been busted outward at some point, but that was all. Aside from that it didn’t look like the place had seen much trouble. There was some tuna in the pantry closet and some frozen pop in the fridge. The tuna made for a quick meal. I found some hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet and put that all over my cuts. Then I moved on to the next house.
That house had its front door and a big glass window both broken outward. I guessed that’s how the zombies got out. I’d seen a lot of that back in town.
Thinking on that, I wondered what ever happened to all those zombies that I’d led out of town on that first day. Did they just keep going? Or did they split up and spread out? I know some came back because Mr. Oliver told me that they had to shoot most of the town while I was healing up from my glass cuts.
Anyhow, I gave that house and the next few a quick search before moving on. Nothing interesting to be found until I reached almost the end of the block.
While checking the upstairs of that house I saw a huge spot of dried blood. It looked like something on the other side of a closed bedroom door had bled out, the blood flowing and pooling under the door. I stepped up and smashed the door knob with my maul, making the door fly inward on its hinges.
Inside I saw a couple of human legs laying on the floor. It looked like they’d been torn off at the hip. That’s all I had time to see before the four zombies standing around came at me.
They looked like they used to be a family. Two kids, around fifteen years old, and a mom and dad. I stepped back into the hall and let them stumble into each other. Without much room to swing, I did my possible best by jamming one in the forehead with the business end of my maul. I put enough force into it to get the job done but the rest had backed me up to the stairs. I was still exhausted from my last night’s endeavors, and I was so worried about how tired my arms were getting, that I forgot all about my feet. Tripping over backwards on the first step, I went crashing down. They followed, falling right after me.
One of them (mom zombie, I think) grabbed my calf, causing me to I screamed in pain and fear as I swung my blade over and chopped that hand off at the wrist. Scrabbling back, I got to my feet and really started swinging before more of them could get any grabby notions.
All the zombies that had come after me had trouble getting back to their feet. I had enough head room to make a good swing against the mom zombie that had made it all the way down the stairs with me. Crack went one skull, crack went another, crack went the third. I was starting to enjoy that sound. I made a mental note to talk to the reverend about that. I couldn’t let this whole thing turn me crazy. My parents would be so disappointed.
I started to head back upstairs before I realized there was no point. There was no Hope up there. Surely, she would have yelled by now. I called out, introducing myself, just to be sure.
That’s when I heard some scuttling noises and looked back up the stairs. What I saw was the rest of Mr. Legless zombie. There it was, standing on its hands at the head of the stairs, with nothing but torn nubs where its legs should have been. I froze. Don’t know why, I just did. Maybe it was the cheeks bitten off with the all the teeth showing through. Or maybe it was all the skin torn off down its front with the guts hanging out and trailing along behind. Also, I was kind of tired. Anyhow, I just stood there like a bump on a log while it clambered down at me.
Just before it got to me I came to my senses and tried a wild swing. My blow went through the banister, and broke into the stairs, ending up right in front of that damn horror’s face. It reached one clumsy hand out, and by pure chance, grabbed hold of my maul haft just behind the head. I tried swinging again, but the entrails trailing terror seemed to have disappeared. I looked around, holing my maul aloft, wondering what happened to it. It only took half a second to figure out that trailing intestine in front of my face was leading upward. Suddenly, that maul got a lot lighter and I got a lot heavier.
Worst case scenario is grappling with a zombie. I’ve found that I’m a match for a ghoul, if I can grab it, but a zombie can rip people apart. I was bruised to the bone where mom zombie had grabbed my leg for just a second. Now this dead thing from Hell’s red cellar had me by the head. I panicked.
Dropping my maul, I grabbed it by its guts and pulled hard. I stumbled and tripped over the maul handle, falling against the broken banister. It tried to twist my head off, but only managed to grab my knit cap and two fistfuls of hair. With its hands free of me and only holding my cap, I managed to pull it off by its guts, sling it around, and toss it across the room.
Head bleeding, I grabbed up a lamp stand and ran over to it. It stretched its hands out toward me but I made sure to stay well out of reach. With a shout I slammed the lamp down on its chest so hard that I broke the stand in half. I had been aiming for its head, of course, but missed as it squirmed upright.
When it got back up to its hands and started crawling toward me again I backed up and grabbed my maul off the floor. I waited for it as I caught my breath. Once it got close enough I placed one well considered strike right down on its crown. I had to sit down for a minute after that.
Back on the search, I made it to the end of the block without finding Hope. The cemetery across the street didn’t parallel White Street any farther. I was at a bit of a loss. With nothing better to try I kept heading down White Street just hoping for the best. I even kept calling out. After a couple of blocks I saw a curious thing.
There were more tombstones off between two businesses; a carpet store and a bar. The tiny cemetery looked real old and I guessed nobody had ever wanted to pay to have the bodies moved. That happened sometimes with old homestead graveyards. The folks would sell the land but moving graves was a whole nother matter. Whoever bought the land was stuck with the graveyard until the city or county stepped in, if that ever even happened.
As soon as I saw the address I remembered it right away. Nineteen thirty-two. Plain as day. Right across from the cemetery, just like she said. I picked up the pace and just about ran to the front door. My heart was singing as I knocked on it and shouted out, “It’s John, sorry I’m late. Let me in!”
After a few seconds, I saw the little face of a solemn cherub peeking out from behind curtains. She was still on the phone. The next minute the door was open, and I was face to face with Hope. She seemed relieved. I know I was.
I stepped inside and locked the door. We were in an open family room with all the usual furniture. Davenport, chairs, TV, etc. There was toaster plugged in the wall, though. That was odd.
She said, “I thought you said ‘an hour.’”
“I said, ‘at least an hour.’”
She asked, “How tall are you?”
I answered, “I’m exactly six feet. How tall are you?”
“Four feet, and one half inch, last time I checked.”
Wantin
g to pay her a compliment I told her, “That’s pretty big, you must be nine.”
“I’m only seven.” I could hear a small, familiar voice coming from the phone she was holding in her hand.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked while motioning to the phone.
She said, “Lot’s of people, I’m on speaker.”
“Anyone I might know?”
Finally she gave me a ghost of a smile and spoke into phone, “I’m right here. Everything’s okay now, John’s here. Can we come and see you?”
She listened for a minute then said, “Okay. They want to talk to you now,” and gave me the phone.
“Hello,” because I don’t know any better way to start a conversation on a phone.
Anna was the first to speak, “Why didn’t you call me! What were you thinking! We’ve all been worried sick! Stay where you are! Everybody’s coming to get you!”
Hope said, “What’s she saying?”
Putting my hand over the phone, “She’s yelling at me for taking so long.”
“You did take a long time. You said an hour. I know how to tell time.” She seemed proud of that.
“I said, ‘at least an hour’. That means maybe longer. I didn’t learn how to tell time until I was eight. You’re pretty smart.” I had to ask, “What’s the toaster for?”
“For making toast!”
She was going to make this tough, “Why is it in the family room?”
“So I don’t have to go to the kitchen to make toast.”
I asked, “Is the power on?”
“No.”
“Do you have any bread?”
“No.”
“Oh.” What else do you say to that?
By then Anna was winding down some, so I could get a word in edgewise, “How long ago did everybody head out?”
She said that they had started about half an hour ago, just after the wind let up, hoping that they could dig through the drifts. They took a whole convoy, including a few big four wheel drive trucks. They even put a couple of snowblowers in the backs of the trucks. Everybody was armed with all the guns. Even most of the women came along.
I must have been even more tired than I thought. I said that last part sounded dangerous. You can imagine her response. Once she gets worked up Anna loses all her sense of humor. Then it’s all righteous indignation and self justification. Women.
Once my last remark wore off, and I’d wised up some, I asked who was left to guard the kids and such. Mr Oliver volunteered that only Anna, the children, and the wounded were left behind. I immediately assured everyone of my confidence in their ability to keep the kids safe while silently cursing the folly of Man. Sending everyone after one one lost person was stupid.
I asked if the doctor was there. Anna said no. I asked if the reverend was there. Anna said no. I even asked if Mrs. Fisher was there (she could kill a zombie with a harsh look and was almost as good a shot as Mr. Ottenbocker). Again, no.
I asked about their ammunition situation. Mr. Bueno said they still had a box of shells left and four over and under rifles. Swell. Twenty-five shells and four guns. I sure hoped the road crew hurried. Now I knew how they felt, worrying about me. At least that’s what Anna told me.
“Has anyone bothered to call them and let them know the situation?” I asked.
Mr. Miller answered, “Don’t worry John, I took care of that right away.” Smart man.
Anna asked me, “Why didn’t you take a phone with you, John? Why didn’t you call when you got to town?”
I almost pretended interference then and hung up, but I figured they’d just call back. By then Hope had fallen asleep and I didn’t want to wake her up. “I didn’t think the phones would last this long.”
“Well, you could have tried.” I think I liked it better when she was upset with me.
“I forgot.”
The only thing that saved me from another of Anna’s tirades was all the men laughing in the background. “What’s so funny?” I thought I’d try and distract her with whatever their joke was. All I got was more laughter.
Chapter 7: Bumpy Ride, A Father’s Wisdom, and a New Beginning
Even with all the people working together, they thought it would take the better part of the day for the convoy to reach me. They’d had to stop half a dozen times already. That was even with the plow Mr. Muller had put on the front of the truck he was driving. I’d called them so we could talk about what they’d face once they were in town. I figured they’d be pretty worried about driving into a city they thought to be full of monsters.
“So how thick are the ambulatory corpses on the ground, John?” That from Mr. Stein. He liked calling them ‘ambulatory corpses’. I thought that was a bit complicated. I preferred calling them ‘the enemy.’
“Not too bad, Mr. Stein. Be careful, but check out the population sign on your way into the city. Then go to the big tobacco barn. It’s straight ahead on the-” then the phone cut out as suddenly as it had started up. Too bad.
I carried Hope upstairs and we took a nice long nap. Snuggled under all the blankets we could find, it was actually too hot. She woke up around noon and that woke me up. I was getting thirsty.
“Do you have anything to drink in the house?” I asked.
“I’ve been eating snow. I get it from the roof just outside my window.”
Sounded delicious. “Let’s get some.”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Did you bring any food?”
“Sorry, Hope. I was in such a hurry that it didn’t even occur to me. I’d thought that the whole trip, here and back again, would be over already. I’ll go to the neighbors and get some, Okay?”
I watched her mull that over. On the one hand she really didn’t want to be alone. On the other she didn’t want to go outside. “I’m not that hungry,” she said.
She looked pretty hungry. I decided to try and calm her fears. “You can trust me. This won’t be like before. I already know a few empty houses. It’ll just take a minute. Make that ten minutes.” I remembered she could tell time. “You can time me.”
The thought of putting me on the clock intrigued her to the point where she would allow it. Just before I left I had her tell the time and then figure where the long hand would be by the time I came back. I told her to wait upstairs and grabbed a blanket to use as a sack.
Once outside I had to run for it. I knew where I was going but a ten minute time limit would cut it pretty close. I got back to hope’s house with one minute and twenty-two seconds to spare. I know because she told me so.
We feasted on canned salmon and crackers. I’d also lugged back some bottled water I’d found. It was frozen but I was thinking about starting a fire in the fireplace. I was surprised at how much bottled water was was in folk’s kitchens. City folk are crazy. Why buy water when it comes out of the tap for practically nothing?
I asked Hope what had happened to her mom and dad. I’d seen her mom’s body under a sheet in the kitchen but hadn’t investigated. Once in a while I heard shuffling in the basement. Those two reasons were why we spent most of our time upstairs.
Hope told me her dad went out to get some food and came back with his hand bitten. A few hours later he changed. Hope’s mom had tried to fight it off with a meat tenderizer. After it murdered her, Hope ran into the basement. The zombie followed and fell down the stairs (as they are wont to do). She ran around it, climbed back upstairs to the kitchen and latched the door shut.
Without a bunch of it’s buddies to help by pushing from behind, I guessed it couldn’t climb the stairs. Even if it did, it would just fall off again once it tried pounding on the door.
Hope seemed deeply disturbed by her ‘dad’s’ behavior. Very understandable. I tried to explain how it wasn’t really him anymore. It’s hard to explain something you don’t understand yourself. By then she was more upset than ever. Getting Hope to open up had been a mistake; I should have let sleeping dogs lie.
I wanted to calm her down, so I told her a fairy t
ail story I’d heard when I was a kid. ‘Beauty and the Beast’. I made sure to leave out all the violence. That made it the most boring story ever, but it did put her to sleep.
Afterwards, I went to the basement door and opened it. There the zombie was, just standing looking at a window well. Until it saw me, that is. It opened its mouth to give out that moan they all had, but I was down those stairs in an instant and put my maul upside its head. Thirteen pounds of steel ended all Hope’s fears of her ‘father’ forever.
I wrapped up Hope’s father in a sheet I’d found. I put him next to his wife on the kitchen floor. Then I went upstairs to wait for my friends with Hope.
About three o’clock I heard some gunfire in the city somewhere. I checked my own pistol. I had taken no spare bullets and it only had one left in the chamber. At least I’d remembered to holster it. Hope woke up.
She seemed more curious than worried by the gunfire. “Sounds like the fourth of July,” she said.
I replied, “Just like the fourth of July, except without the fun. Hopefully, my friends will be here soon.”
I went outside to keep watch. Hope kept a lookout from the second floor bedroom window. No zombies showed up, and about a quarter hour later, around half past, I saw everybody down the street, clearing the last of the big drifts. With all of their cars stopped behind the snow they looked like a used car lot.
I called out and waved, and two men came running. When Mr. Herst and Reverend Ert came up I told them Hope was safe and sound inside. She waved down from the window. They told us the gunshots we’d heard were just target practice at a few zombies standing at upstairs windows. We all went inside and packed all her things, including a few pictures I made sure to take. Then we trudged back to the cars and headed home.
-
During our absence there had been no trouble. Anna had been so happy to see me she burst into tears. That made me feel like a jerk, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because of the phone thing.
