by Mark Lukens
Patty opened the gates for the old couple who waved and smiled at her as they parked their RV. They seemed so friendly . . .
This was one of those rare stories that came to me fully formed and I wrote it down very quickly. And pretty much what you read here is very close to the first draft I wrote (which, for me, is a rare occurrence).
My wife and I were doing some work around the house, cleaning a metal fence. As I was working, I had a lot of time to let my mind wander. I love doing work like that (like mowing the lawn, for instance) where I don’t have to think too much about what I’m doing and I can let my mind wander—that’s when a lot of these ideas form or I work through some sticking points in a story. As I do that kind of cruise-control type of work, I don’t really try to think of a story—I just let my mind wander from one thought to the next. And a lot of times a question, or a few questions, pop up in my mind. Then the ideas begin to flow. In this case, as I was scrubbing this metal fence, I wondered what would happen if we ruined the fence (which is pretty expensive) with the cleaning agents or something. And then I pictured a sweet elderly couple who are hired to help out around the house, coming highly recommended from their friend . . . and then the whole story kind of unfolded right there in my mind while I worked on that fence underneath that hot Florida sun. I remember writing down the first twenty pages or so (handwritten—I usually handwrite most of my first drafts), and then finishing it up over the next day or so.
It’s strange how ideas pop up sometimes. I knew this wasn’t technically a horror story, but the idea of this elderly couple you can’t get rid of, where accidents keep piling up, chilled me after a while. But the most chilling thing to me was that the main character was more than willing to pass this curse that is Lou and Edna Kravitz on to a friend.
ZOMBIE HOUSE
The beginning of the zombie apocalypse had been a rush of confusion and chaos on that first day for Rhonda.
She’d woken up in bed, sometime around mid-morning, and heard a scratching sound at her bedroom window across the room. Her curtains were open, and she saw her younger brother Jay pawing at the window with one hand. Half of his face was covered with dried blood. His eyes were bulging, but glazed over with death. His mouth was open far too wide, his loose jaw swinging back and forth slightly as he moved.
For a second Rhonda thought this was some kind of prank Jay was pulling because he knew how much she loved horror books and movies, especially anything about the zombie apocalypse.
But it only took a few more seconds to realize that this was no prank—her brother was a mutilated, gory mess . . . dead, yet still scraping at her window and trying to get inside.
She screamed and ran for her parent’s bedroom in a fog of panic. Her parents were gone. The electricity was out. The phones weren’t working.
Rhonda ran out to the living room and stopped when she saw her friend Eric standing there. He had blood splattered all over him, and she thought he was another one of the walking dead. But no, he was alive. He had a claw hammer gripped in one hand.
“My parents . . .” she said, unable to get the rest of the words out.
Eric just nodded solemnly.
“Jay,” Rhonda whispered, her breath leaving her lungs, making them feel empty. She fought for breath as she hyperventilated.
After guiding her to the couch and helping her to get her breathing under control, Eric told her everything he knew so far. He guessed it was some kind of airborne virus, and then the infection had spread quickly from bites and scratches. He told her his parents had been infected—they were zombies now—and then he’d come here to check on her. It had been too late for her family, but at least he’d gotten to her in time. He told her that he’d read articles on the internet about the government playing around with bioweapons and super viruses, and he knew that sooner or later some terrible disease was going to break out.
“But how come we’re not infected?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he told her. “Usually with any virus, there’s always a small percentage that aren’t affected by it.” He looked lost and hopeless. “I wish I knew more,” he said.
Eric was eighteen years old, one year older than she was. He lived next door (which way out here in the country meant a quarter of a mile away). He was in many of Rhonda’s classes at school, and neither one of them were that popular with the other kids. But at least she wasn’t the victim of torment and teasing like Eric was. He was tall but gangly, with a severe case of acne—the target of a lot of the jocks in the locker room
The common bond she and Eric shared was their love of all things horror. Eric would come over and they would watch zombie TV shows and movies together. They even fantasized about what they would do if a zombie apocalypse ever happened.
Well, it was here now and she wasn’t ready.
Be careful what you wish for.
She and Eric had been friends for years, and even though she could tell that Eric wanted more from their relationship, she made sure not to send him any kind of mixed signals. But here he was now, her friend. The only one left.
He had saved her.
Rhonda curled up on the couch as the day grew into afternoon, still in shock. She didn’t know what to do.
“We need to leave,” Eric told her.
“And go where?”
“We need to get some help, but I think we need to hole up somewhere safe for a while first.” He hesitated for a moment. “My family has a cabin up in the mountains. It’s stocked with food and water. We’ll be safe there.”
Rhonda wasn’t ready to leave; she wasn’t ready to go out there with all of the zombies.
“I need to go back outside,” Eric told her. “I need to see how bad it is, make a plan to get out of here.”
He got up to go.
She grabbed him. “No. Wait. Don’t go.”
“I need to do this.”
She let him go.
An hour after he had left, Rhonda heard a noise coming from the kitchen. She got up and crept towards the archway that separated the living room from the kitchen. The noise was louder; it sounded like crashing wood.
She entered the kitchen and saw where the noise was coming from—the door that led out to the garage. Eric had nailed a piece of wood over the door to barricade it, and he’d stacked a few kitchen chairs in front of it, but Rhonda’s father was trying to get inside (not her father anymore; he was a zombie now). The flimsy board over the door had broken free, but at least the pile of chairs was keeping the door from opening all the way. Her father could only get one arm and his head through the open door.
Rhonda didn’t stick around. She ran to her bedroom and locked the door. It was what Eric had told her to do if any of them tried to break in. She knew she should’ve grabbed the biggest kitchen knife she could find and stab the zombie in the head. You had to get them in the brains; everyone knew that. But she couldn’t make herself do it. It was a lot different in real life than it was on the TV shows or in the movies. If she had been a character in one of those shows, she would’ve had a pair of guns holstered around her waist like an Old West gunslinger. Or she would have used a claw hammer like Eric used. But she wasn’t a character in a movie, and she just couldn’t do it.
Maybe in the future she would be able to fight zombies, but not right now.
Eric found Rhonda in her bedroom some time later. He told her that he’d been able to coax her dead father back outside again, and then he’d barred the kitchen door shut. He still smelled of blood and rot, some of it smeared all over his clothes. Maybe the blood on his clothes allowed him to walk among them.
“We can’t stay here much longer,” he told her.
She nodded in agreement.
He told her it was bad out there—real bad. He suggested the cabin again that he’d told her about before. “We’ll be safe up there. Nobody around for miles.”
She nodded again—it was their only chance.
“We’ll take your mom’s car from the garage
,” he told her as he gave her an opened can of soda to drink. “I’ll get it ready, and we’ll leave tonight.”
She took a sip of the soda and nodded. The soda was warm, but it felt good on her throat.
Eric surprised her by hugging her. At first she was going to pull away, but then she gave in and let him hold her.
God, she never would’ve imagined Eric holding her like this, comforting her. She saw him in a new light now. He talked differently. He even looked different to her, more attractive somehow.
Hours later Eric woke Rhonda up in the darkness. He only had a flashlight to light their way as he guided her to the garage. She was so tired, so groggy, still in shock. She lay down in the backseat of her mom’s Dodge Durango with a blanket, and then she was out again.
The next thing she knew she woke up inside the cabin.
The cabin was small with only a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen—just the basics of furniture and décor. Eric had already boarded up the windows the best he could while she’d been asleep, and daylight invaded the cabin in between the slats of wood. But at least they were safe for now.
There was food stocked up in the cabin as Eric had promised, but it wasn’t going to last more than a week or two. He needed to go on a scavenger run. He asked if she wanted to go with him.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m not ready to go out there yet.”
Eric understood. He told her to take her time and then he touched her face, the gentlest of touches.
After he was gone, she locked the cabin door and stared at it. She felt bad letting him go by himself. She felt useless, like a dead weight Eric was forced to drag around. She promised herself that she would change in the next few days—she promised herself that she would force herself to go out there into that zombie-infested world.
An hour later, any thoughts of going out into that world evaporated when she heard a zombie at the living room window. There was a hard thump against the glass, and then that pawing sound—the same sound her brother had made.
She went towards the window, and she could see an old man out there, clawing at the glass. He looked even more decayed than her father and brother had been.
Even though the zombie only clawed at the window for a few minutes, it seemed like forever. And then he was at the front door, thumping against it, rattling the door handle, trying to get inside.
Rhonda sank down to her knees, and then she crawled over by the kitchen cabinets with the claw hammer Eric had left behind clutched in her hands. She cried silently and stayed as still as she could.
The zombies found us already. We were supposed to be safe up here, but they found us!
Eric woke Rhonda up hours later. She was angry with him, taking out her fear on him. He took it well, but he told her things were worse out there than he had imagined. The dead were everywhere. She calmed down, and he gave her a bottle of water. It was warm, but it was from the solar-powered well on the property. The water tasted a little funny, but it quenched her thirst.
“I’m sorry,” he told her as he held her. “We’re going to find some help soon. I promise. I’ll find a military patrol or something. Someone who can help us.”
That night they kissed. And their kissing led to the bedroom. They made love for the first time. It felt so good to be in Eric’s arms. Afterwards, they lay together in silence, their naked bodies still touching under the thin sheet that covered them.
Two days later Eric went on another supply run. He said he would try to find a battery-powered radio, even though none of the stations were coming in on her mom’s Durango—everything was static. He’d promised to try to find something sweet for her, maybe some chocolate. But everything was already becoming scarce out there, and he wanted to be careful; he didn’t want to be noticed by the other survivors. A lot of those survivors were even more dangerous than the zombies, and he didn’t want them following him back to the cabin.
After Eric left, Rhonda had visions of those survivors finding the cabin and kicking the door in. She could be raped or killed. Or the survivors could take over the cabin and kick her and Eric out and into the land of the living dead.
But those nightmarish visions of survivors vanished when she heard the zombie back at the living room window, pawing at it. Only this zombie was a woman. Rhonda slinked back to her spot on the floor near the kitchen cabinets, cowering there with the claw hammer gripped in her hands.
A few days later Eric tried to get Rhonda to come outside with him. “Just for a few minutes,” he told her.
But she couldn’t do it.
“Take your time,” he told her as he held her. “I don’t want you to go out there until you’re ready. We have all the time in the world.”
Rhonda had lost so much . . . her entire family. But she was so lucky to have Eric with her.
Four days later everything changed.
Eric was on another supply run. He had brought chocolates back for her, and she had eaten all of them along with a few more cans of warm soda and that funny-tasting water from the well. He promised to find more goodies for her on this trip, maybe even another bottle of vodka. She had finished the last bottle they had, drinking a cup or two every night so she could sleep. But sometimes just being in Eric’s arms made her feel better than the alcohol did.
She’d been writing in her journal when she heard a noise outside—but it wasn’t the sound of the zombies clawing at the wood and glass. This was a different noise. This noise was coming from above the cabin.
The noise got louder and Rhonda froze. She recognized that sound.
A helicopter.
A helicopter was flying right over the cabin.
And now it was flying away.
Oh God, what was she doing? It could be a military or a police helicopter. Maybe they were searching for survivors of the plague.
She grabbed her claw hammer and ran to the front door. She hesitated there for a moment at the front door as the sound of the helicopter grew fainter. She imagined opening the door and seeing zombies right on the other side. She imagined the zombies were somehow smart, waiting hour upon hour for her to open the door.
But she pushed that image from her mind—this was her only chance. Eric would be so proud of her for flagging down a helicopter. They could be saved. Maybe they would be taken to a military compound where people were beginning to rebuild America. Maybe this plague had only affected this part of Georgia, or even just the Southeast. Maybe there were other parts in America, or the world, that were safe.
Rhonda unlocked the front door and swung it open.
No zombies that she could see.
She raced out into the front field of tall grass. She looked around for zombies in the field, or in the woods all around the cabin, but she didn’t see any. She looked up at the blue sky and spotted the helicopter. It was flying away from the cabin.
Nooo . . .
She raised her hammer up and waved her arms frantically. She screamed even though she knew her yells could attract zombies.
But now the helicopter was gone.
The world was silent again, and she stopped yelling and waving her arms.
She was sad to see the helicopter go, but she was also elated as hope built up inside of her. The helicopter meant that humanity wasn’t dead. There was a place they could go. She couldn’t wait to tell Eric about it.
But then something in the sky caught her attention—a vapor trail from an airplane, which looked like a white dot up in the sky.
There was an airplane in the sky?
She noticed two other vapor trails in different directions. There were other planes in the sky. It looked like a normal blue sky on a normal day.
Rhonda felt a sense of dread worming its way through her body. Her skin tingled, and her stomach flip-flopped inside of her. Her muscles suddenly felt weak.
Something was wrong here.
She walked back towards the cabin, but instead of going inside, she went around to the side of it where the li
ving room window was. She clutched her hammer even tighter as she saw the dried bloodstains on the wood siding beneath the window. She crept down the side of the cabin, and the smell of the dead was already hitting her.
She hesitated for a moment. Was there a zombie close by?
But she forced herself to walk to the back corner of the cabin where the smell was worse. She peeked around the corner and froze. Crumpled against the back wall of the cabin was the body of the zombie woman she had seen a few days earlier at the living room window. But the woman wasn’t moving. Most of her legs were gone.
Rhonda forced herself to move closer to the dead woman. She walked on numb legs and raised her hammer a little, ready to use it if the woman lunged at her.
But this woman wasn’t going to lunge at her; she wasn’t going to move ever again. She was dead. Maggots nested in the stumps of her legs, and ants crawled all over her body.
Now that Rhonda was closer to the woman, she saw the steel rods stuck into the woman’s wrists. The rods were two and a half feet long. They looked like they controlled her arms like one might control a Muppet.
The horrifying realization hit her now—the zombies only came to the windows and door whenever Eric was gone. He’d been outside every time a zombie came. He had been controlling them. Eric had killed these people and he had made them act like zombies. He had set the whole thing up to get her here to this cabin, to be with her, to live out this sick fantasy of his.
Oh God, he had killed her family.
She heard a vehicle driving up through the trail in the woods that led to the cabin.
Eric! He was coming back.
She had to run. Once he realized that she knew the truth, he would kill her. Maybe she would become another zombie puppet for him to play with.
Rhonda spotted a small woodshed near the trees where the seemingly endless woods began. She bolted through the tall grass to the front door of the shed and ducked inside. The smell of rot inside the shed almost took her breath away, her head swimming for a moment. She looked back out through the cracks in the wood door as her mom’s Dodge Durango pulled up in front of the cabin. Eric got out with a burlap sack in which he had collected his “scavenged supplies.”
