Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  But Philadelphia is just the latest in a string of cities all along the East Coast to fall to the infection. And over this last week, other large cities have reported outbreaks of infection. In just three days, large pockets of Los Angeles have been declared disaster zones…

  It took a moment, but finally Lizzy saw the shoes in front of the couch, and then the body of the man still in them. He was lying face down on top of a crumpled coffee table. He was naked, save for the shoes, his gray skin hanging loose on his body. His torso was a series of deep tears and rips, revealing broken ribs and feeding hundreds of white, wiggling worms. What used to be his head was now a pile of mush, the skull nearly flattened to the floor. Lizzy fought to stifle a scream.

  Federal reserve troops have already left the City of Brotherly Love, and the National Guard troops are set to retreat with them to the suburbs surrounding the city to set up a new front in hopes of containing the outbreak from there.

  Across from the couch, another dead body (Mr. McGraff? From two houses down?) was slumped in the recliner. He wore a torn and bloodied Eagles jersey and a large chunk was missing from his left arm. His face was contorted into a sneer, and a broken leg from the coffee table was lodged in one of his eye sockets.

  The governor is expected to speak within the hour from an undisclosed, safe location outside the capital. But he's already ordered the evacuation of Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and the surrounding suburbs.

  Lizzy could hear a scratching sound from behind the couch in the corner of the living room. She moved closer to peer over the side of the couch. The TV was on the floor laying with the screen, which was cracked, face up. It still functioned and two people, if that's the right word, were on their knees on either side of it, clawing and biting at the image of the woman on the screen, her features and blonde hair streaked with gore.

  This will be my last broadcast from inside our headquarters here in Philadelphia as my crew and I are scheduled to leave with the National Guard troops. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared. I overheard two soldiers saying that most of the proposed evacuation routes were already compromised, and our retreat into the outskirts of the city would be met with a great amount of resistance.

  Lizzy thought she recognized the woman kneeling in front of the TV. "Mom?"

  Lizzy's parents whipped their faces towards her. Her mother's left cheek was missing, exposing teeth and gums. Some of her cheek hung out of her father's mouth, stuck between his canines.

  Lizzy screamed. Her parents jumped to their feet and bolted towards her full force. Lizzy, backing away, fell backward over the hall table laying across the passageway.

  If you cannot leave, please stay tuned to this station for further emergency broadcasts. Be safe, Philadelphia. And as always, I hope to see you on the other side.

  Lizzy crab-crawled backward and her parents, emitting a guttural growl of sorts, scrambled quickly towards her. Both of them tripped over the overturned table and landed hard and tangled, giving Lizzy a chance to get to her feet and run. But the reprieve was brief. They also leaped to their feet and sprinted towards her, quickly closing the distance.

  Lizzy wanted to run back into the basement, but one look over her shoulder and she knew it was impossible. If she stopped to open the basement door, they'd be on her.

  Instead, Lizzy ran past the basement door and the passage leading into the kitchen. She didn't change direction to head down the next corridor to her right where the bedrooms were located. She pushed on into the den at the end of the hall and had the presence of mind to reach out for the doorknob and pull the door closed behind her.

  It didn't matter.

  Her parents were moving fast enough that their momentum carried them through it. Pieces of the door flew everywhere as it splintered, and Lizzy's parents burst into the room. They were momentarily confused, losing sight of Lizzy. A piece of the door stuck out of Mr. Glasgow's abdomen, but he seemed unconcerned. Then both parents caught sight of their daughter on the other side of the room and moved quickly to intercept her.

  Lizzy ran through the door at the other end of the den, again pulling it closed as she went. This time her parents didn't have the running room to manage the speed they'd worked up to before. They slammed into the door, and it merely cracked under the pressure. The door rattled and shook as they pummeled on in incessantly. Lizzy backed away from the door slowly, her heart erupting in her chest, and managed to breathe deep and heavy until she was standing in the passage on the other side of the kitchen.

  "Lizzy, what's going on?"

  Lizzy looked across the kitchen. Brandon was standing outside the basement doorway in the hall she'd just escaped from.

  Brandon made a motion to his right with his thumb. "What happened to the door? Where are Mom and Dad?"

  Suddenly the pounding on the door in front of Lizzy stopped. It took her only a quarter of a second to realize why.

  She turned to her brother and ran as fast as she could across the kitchen. "Brandon!" she screamed. She watched as her brother turned to his right. She recognized the look of stark horror as it spread across his face. She could hear her parents' snarl as they approached outside her view.

  Lizzy dove towards her brother and tackled him just as he was beginning to crouch in a terrified, defensive posture. Her parent's outstretched hands grazed her back as both Lizzy and Brandon disappeared into the basement and slammed into the wall at the top of the stairs. Lizzy barely kept them from toppling down the steps.

  Mr. and Mrs. Glasgow were once again disoriented briefly when their prey vanished from in front of them, giving Lizzy time to shut and lock the basement door. No sooner was the bolt in place than the door began to rock, pounded from the other side.

  Brandon was crying and Lizzy might have been, too, were she not in a state of shock.

  "Wuh…what's wrong with Mom and Dad?" Brandon stuttered between blubbering pants.

  "I don't know." They both watched the door. "I don't know," she said again, shaking her head.

  She put her arm softly around her brother's shoulder, and both of them backed slowly down the stairs. As they did so, finally, for Lizzy, the tears began to flow.

  * * * * *

  For the next few days, the tears continued to flow as the siblings came to grips with their situation. During that time they ate very little and slept even less, tortured emotionally by the constant beating at the top of the stairs, and unconsciously by visions of their parents anytime they managed to close their eyes.

  On the fifth day, they began to ask questions. When will their parents ever quit banging on the door? Why don't they ever get tired? Or hungry? Or thirsty? But mainly, why on Earth would their parents want to hurt them?

  On the sixth day, Lizzy decided to ascend the basement stairs and try to talk some sense into her parents, although, by that point, she knew unconsciously the endeavor was pointless.

  That's when she found the note. It was on the floor next to the door, half leaning against the wall. It read:

  "DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!

  Lizzy and Brandon,

  Your father was hurt and may have been infected by the bad bug going around. I have him in bed in our bedroom and am doing what I can for him. Don't leave the basement until I come for you. If for some reason you don't hear from me for awhile, and you must leave the basement, go through the door that goes to the backyard and head over to the Hoppers' place. Use the alleys. Don't go out into the street! It's dangerous out. No matter what, never forget that your father and I love you very much.

  -Mom"

  The note was stained with what might have been blood and spotted with what might have been tears. The top of the note had a strip of tape across it. Apparently, their mother had taped the note to the inside of the door before locking the lower lock, closing the door, then securing the deadbolt. The tape must have come loose before Lizzy woke up to discover her parents were gone.

  Lizzy showed the note to her younger brother, and he cried some more. It was obvious
Mom wouldn't be coming for them. At least not in the way they'd have hoped.

  It was another four days before they decided to chance leaving the basement. They'd do exactly as their mother had suggested—leave through the basement door that opened into the backyard and head to the Hoppers'. In preparation for the trip, Brandon decided to utilize their father's tools to fashion a weapon. He found a short 2x4, about three-foot long, and drove nails into one end of it to create a nasty, lethal club. But the noise from its construction yielded unexpected, heart-wrenching results. Before the fifth nail was driven, there was a pounding on the backyard door to match the pounding at the top of the stairs.

  Brandon climbed a table and peeked out the window through the chip in the paint. Two women, each with gaping open wounds and organs and guts hanging out from them, were laid out on top of the double doors, beating on them with their hands. They'd been drawn in by the pounding of the hammer.

  Now Lizzy and her brother were truly trapped.

  They spent the next four weeks in relative boredom. They talked very little, only when necessary.

  Lizzy doled out their dull food, warming it on a hotplate. But a week in, the electricity went out, forcing them to eat their food cold and utilize sleeping bags in addition to their comforters on nights the temperature dropped.

  To pass the time, Brandon pulled out the rest of the camping equipment and erected a tent, tying the ropes off to various pieces of furniture or pipes since he couldn't stake them to the ground (not that he was concerned the wind would knock over the tent). Lizzy, for her part, found a collection of sappy romance novels and surprised herself at how engrossed she could get into them.

  Eventually, Brandon committed what would have been a cardinal sin were his father still alive. He cracked the lid on his father's prized comic book collection, grabbed a handful of the thin, plastic-sheathed books, and disappeared into the tent, where he spent most of his time. As the days passed, the box grew more and more empty until Brandon eventually moved the entire collection into the tent, save for a small stack of Archies, which he apparently didn't care for. He left them on his father's work bench. At one point, Lizzy peeked into the tent flaps to see early editions of Batman and Superman, horror and mystery comics, all sleeveless, scattered about the tent carelessly, Brandon cross-legged in a corner, reading by flashlight.

  Throughout, the pounding on the doors never ceased. It slowed, perceptibly, from the initial barrage of fists, but it never stopped. And between the noise at the top of the stairs and the racket from those beating on the backyard basement door, it could be nerve-racking at times.

  On the rare occasions Lizzy and Brandon spoke, it was usually to discuss plans of escape, but none of their ideas seemed all that plausible. Brandon favored fashioning another weapon and simply throwing open one of the exits and taking on whatever was out there. But neither of them could warm to the idea of having to face their parents again, much less fight them. The backyard door didn't seem like a good idea either. First, they probably couldn't lift the doors with those things on them. Second, the small window offered little in the way of reconnaissance. There could be a hundred more of those things wandering the backyard or the alley beyond and they'd never know it until it was too late. But one problem they couldn't get passed was the speed with which the creatures moved. Even if they could get out of the house, if they were ever spotted by one of those things, they'd never be able to outrun it.

  They never seemed to tire or run out of breath.

  Which was another topic of their scant discussions. Just what were those things? Why didn't they need to rest? Take a piss break? Again questions of food and water and how those things went without either would emerge from their conversations. And then, how were they still alive with such terrible wounds?

  It was Brandon who first suggested they might not be alive at all.

  It was Brandon who first used the "Z" word.

  But no matter how many times they discussed the possibilities that they were dealing with zombies or simply extremely ill living human beings, or how many times they debated escape, they always ended doing nothing at all towards leaving the basement, believing, in the end, they'd undoubtedly be rescued, and all their questions then inevitably answered.

  But eventually, Lizzy was forced into the realization that their escape was necessary, and soon.

  Several concerns contributed to this conclusion. Not the least of them was the stench, which assailed their senses on three fronts. First, the stench of death from both the top of the stairs and the backyard doors. Second, the smell emanating from the small basement bathroom toilet. The water stopped working two days after the electricity and they hadn't been able to flush the toilet in weeks. Third, their own body odor. With the loss of water came the loss of the ability for sponge baths in the bathroom sink to keep themselves at least somewhat clean.

  The loss of water also brought about another, more serious concern. Lizzy hadn't been rationing water as heavily as food because they'd been able to refill water bottles in the sink. Now they were down to only nine bottles of water.

  And even with as good a job as she'd done rationing food, the supply quickly dwindled. They were down to five cans of beans and eight pre-packaged containers of mixed fruit. At most she could make it last a week, but no more.

  It was time for Lizzy and her brother to have another discussion on how to escape. A serious discussion.

  The conversation revealed nothing new. Opening the door at the top of the stairs was really their only option. There was no way to move the two zombies from atop the basement's backyard door, and even if they could coax them off in some way, they had no idea what lay beyond the doors until they were opened. However, if they managed to get passed their parents, either by killing them or locking them in the basement, then they'd have time to look out the windows and plan their next move.

  The speed with which their parents moved was still a problem, but Brandon reasoned that, if they were indeed dealing with zombies, then maybe rather than chasing them down the stairs, their parents would simply fall down them, giving him and his sister time to maneuver around them…if they fell all the way down the stairs. It seemed plausible and only required one person to open the door. The other could wait within the basement, hopefully out of harm's way.

  There was some debate as to who should be the one to open the door, and it was then that Lizzy remembered something. She recalled how quickly her parents became disoriented when they couldn't lock on a target. What if they used that to their advantage? They could both open the door and try to squeeze themselves behind it. Then when their parents weren't looking, Lizzy and Brandon could push them down the stairs. It seemed the path of least resistance, even if it did leave both of them trapped between their parents and the wall.

  Both agreed Lizzy's plan was their best option and set the next morning as their time of escape. Brandon got busy making another weapon for Lizzy while Lizzy inventoried their few supplies and tried to figure out how to carry them and still pull off hiding behind the door.

  Lizzy decided against taking any of the romance novels. There would be better things to read upstairs. Brandon insisted on a handful of comics he hadn't had a chance to read yet, and eventually, Lizzy relented. She thought about what she'd bring if she could and decided she wanted to dig her diary out of her closet in her bedroom and bring it along.

  Then it hit her. Her diary. Her closet.

  She jumped to her feet.

  Brandon saw her and stopped hammering. "What is it?"

  Lizzy looked up and studied the basement's ceiling, made up of floor joists of the floor above them. "Where do you think my room is?" she asked him in reply.

  "Stupid question. Down the hall from the den, third door on the left."

  "No dummy. From here. Where is my room above us?"

  "Oh. I don't know. Let's see…" Brandon pondered.

  He met Lizzy in the middle of the floor and together they walked under the staircase so that,
upstairs they would have been just outside the basement door. From there the two of them walked the hallway in their minds and turned about where they agreed the corridor leading to the bedroom would be. Then, about thirty feet from the basement wall, Brandon stopped, imagining the ten foot or so distance from Lizzy's bedroom door to their parent's door, then the depth of their parents' room to the outer wall, roughly twenty feet. Then Brandon took a left, walked a few feet, and turned back to face Lizzy.

  "Your room would be around in this area, I think."

  Lizzy nodded. "Yeah, that feels about right."

  "Why?"

  Lizzy didn't answer. Instead, she scanned the floor joists above her, particularly in the area she imagined her closet would be with respect to her bedroom door.

  Finally, she saw it; a two-foot by one-foot plywood box built crudely between two joists. Lizzy grabbed a chair and pulled it beneath the box. She stood on the chair and felt for a way into the box. Her fingers circled the roofing tacks binding the plywood to the joists.

  "Go get the hammer," she told her brother.

  "What's this about?" he asked.

  "You'll see. Just go get it."

  Sighing loudly, Brandon retrieved the hammer and handed it up to her. Using the claw of the hammer, Lizzy quickly found a bite between the plywood and the joist and pried the hammer up, forcing the plywood down. The one-inch nails popped loose easily. She pulled down on the plywood with her hands and nearly lost her balance on the chair when her diary hit her in the chest and fell to the floor.

  "All that for your stupid diary?"

  "No dummy."

  "Stop calling me that!"

  Lizzy ignored him and pulled the plywood completely off, dropping it to the floor, and looked up into the box. She remembered when her older brother had shown her the secret hiding place in his closet in the room she'd inherit the next day after he moved away to go to college. She'd been perplexed at first when he pulled her into his closet, then got on his hands and knees, rummaging in a corner. He'd peeled back a corner of the carpet, then yanked up some boards set loosely between the joists. He told her how he'd build a box below his closet so he'd have a place to hide things. He'd never told her what he'd kept there, but she imagined weed and porno mags. And when she moved in, although her diary was no secret, she'd started hiding it in the secret place in her closet to keep it out of the hands of her nosey little brother.