Dropping the curtain into place, Lenore said to Ken, “We just got the little kid outside the door.”
“Where are the rest?” Ken lightly patted the Sheriff’s hand. It was obvious he didn’t know what else to do.
“Beats me. Trying to eat someone else, probably.”
The phone suddenly rang beside her and, in spite of her determination to keep calm, she jerked in surprise. She snatched up the phone and said, “Hello?” She hoped to hear her grandmother’s voice.
“Lenore,” Mr. Cloy’s voice whispered. “They’re trying to get in my store.”
“Did you call the police?”
“You mean the guy lying on the floor in your shop?” Mr. Cloy sounded both afraid and peeved.
“Good point. Where you at?”
“Hiding behind the counter hoping if they can’t see me they’ll lose interest.”
“You got a weapon?”
There was a long moment of silence, then Mr. Cloy said, “I left it in my truck. I took it home to clean and take to the range and I forgot it in my truck.”
Lenore frowned and leaned against the counter. “Okay, we’re about to leave with the Sheriff for the hospital. Can you sneak to the back of the store and be ready to leave by the alley door?”
“There are cracks in the window,” Mr. Cloy said in a trembling voice.
“Are you listening to me? Can you move to the back of the store?”
“I’m afraid to move. They’re trying so hard to get in. What if they see me and it makes them even crazier? I really thought the rapture would happen by this point. I really did.” He sounded close to hysteria.
“Okay, we will honk when we are behind your store. That is when you get up, run to the door, open it and get to the car. Okay?”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Okay.”
“Then we gotta plan. See you in a few.”
Lenore hung up and grumbled to herself. She walked to the back of the store and grabbed Ken’s rolling office chair. Mumbling the whole time about zombies and people freaking out, she dragged it to the Sheriff and Ken.
Ken was very quiet as he fearfully stared at the old man.
“Help me get him up,” Lenore ordered.
“He’s dead,” Ken answered softly.
“What?”
“He just kinda let out this long breath then stopped breathing. I checked his pulse.” Ken wiped a tear away from his cheek.
“You better step back in case he gets up,” Lenore urged.
Ken crawled backward, his body trembling. He rested his back against the wall and stared at the old man blankly. “Lenore, I couldn’t do anything.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lenore said firmly.
“Is he gonna come back?”
“I don’t know,” Lenore answered. She grabbed the coat rack and stood over the old man. “I guess we’ll find out.”
In silence, they waited.
6.
Where To Go?
Lenore split her attention between the body and the clock on the wall. The coat rack was increasingly heavier, but she had to be ready if the Sheriff did decide to sit up and eat them. Ken plucked a heavy lamp off a table, ditched the lampshade, and wound the cord around the base. It was a good bludgeoning weapon.
“If he gets up, I’ll hit him first then you,” Lenore instructed Ken.
“I’m ready.” Ken hoisted the lamp stand over his head. He appeared both scared and determined.
Five minutes passed.
“He’s not getting up,” Ken said at last.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“The ones outside got up right away.”
Lenore poked at the body with the coat rack. There was no response. “Well, zombies aren’t smart enough to fake it.”
“I think he’s really, really dead.” Ken poked the Sheriff’s head a few times with his foot. It lolled about a little, but the Sheriff did not move otherwise. “Yep. Dead.”
“Okay. Then we leave now and get Mr. Cloy,” Lenore decided.
“I’m so ready to not be here with dead things.” Ken headed to the rear of the store. Lenore trudged along behind him.
“Got your keys?”
Ken frowned. “Of course-oh, wait!” He dashed to the counter, giving wide berth to the dead body on the floor, and grabbed up his keys from beside the cash register. “What would I do without you?”
“Let’s not find out,” Lenore answered.
Ken rushed to her side and together they stared at the heavy wood door that opened onto the alley. “I’m scared.”
“Me, too.”
“I never watched horror movies growing up. They scared me too much. I’m not ready for this,” Ken said in a trembling voice. He wrapped his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulder.
Reaching up, Lenore patted his hair, stiff with hair gel and hairspray, and sighed. “Me neither. I thought they were stupid movies.”
“So neither one of us knows what we’re doing,” Ken groaned.
“Yep. But then again, it’s a unique situation. It’s not like dead babies get up every day and start eating everyone.”
“Unless you live in L.A.” Ken was convinced everything bad on the planet originated in L.A.
Lenore rolled her eyes and heaved the coat rack over her shoulder. “Okay, open the door.”
“I really don’t wanna.”
“Dead body behind us,” she reminded him.
“Fine!”
Ken whipped open the door. The alley came into view. Ken’s small Volkswagen convertible was parked just across from the back door under a carport. Between the door and the Volkswagen were five zombies greedily ripping apart some poor person and stuffing bits of flesh and gore into their mouths.
“Shut the door,” Lenore ordered.
Ken stared in horror. “I think they’re eating the mailman.”
Lenore reached out and slammed the door shut just as the zombies realized there were fresh humans standing nearby. Sliding the heavy bolts into place and twirling the deadbolts until they locked, Lenore felt her stomach heaving. Beside her, Ken sobbed softly. Something hit the door on the other side and faintly they could hear the dead thing growling.
Overcome, Lenore stumbled to a nearby sink they used for cleaning up the brushes and bowls and threw up. Tears stung her eyes as her stomach kept emptying and her body was wracked with tremors. Ken’s hands delicately pulled her hair back and he stood next to her until she finished. She rinsed her mouth out with water as Ken rubbed her back and whispered that it would be okay.
Slowly straightening, she tried not to let him see she was crying. “Mr. Cloy is in danger. We were supposed to pick him up. They’re trying to get into his store.”
Behind them, the banging on the back door continued.
“We can’t go out through the alley. Can we go out the front? Maybe whack the little demon kid?”
“The other ones are right next door. If we go out and they rush us...” Lenore shook her head. “We’re kinda stuck.”
Ken suddenly looked excited. “The gun! The gun! The Sheriff has a gun!”
Together they raced over to the man’s body and knelt beside it. They both reached for the holster at the same time only to realize it was empty.
“What the hell?” Ken looked around the store.
“I got a bad feeling,” Lenore said, heaving herself to her feet. She moved over to the window and cracked the curtain just a little.
The little bastard was still pounding on the door, but didn’t notice her. In the street more of the dead things wandered around. They were fairly messed up and it was hard to tell if they were townspeople or not, though a few looked slightly familiar. She scanned the street and sighed.
“Gun is out in the street. He must have had it in his hand.”
She let the curtain fall into place.
The phone began to ring again. Ken snatched it up. “Hello? Mr. Cloy? Yes. We were going to get you but there are more zombies in the a
lley. Um. Um. You don’t have an office in the back you can lock yourself in? Well, true. You’d be trapped with no exit. Uh.”
Lenore grabbed the phone from Ken. “Go up to your storage room and lock yourself in. At least you got a window up there. Yeah, I know it has bars. But you’re in a hardware store. Grab something-”
Even in the beauty shop they heard the glass shatter next door. It was a frightful sound and Lenore heard Mr. Cloy gasp in terror.
“Run to the storage room upstairs!”
The phone on the other end hit the floor and she heard footsteps rushing away from it as the moans and screeches of the dead grew louder.
She banged the phone down.
Through the thick brick walls, they heard the cries of the dead.
“I want to go upstairs,” Ken said finally.
Lenore jumped at the sound of someone thumping their fists against the beauty shop window started. “Yeah. I think you’re right. They’re all stirred up now.”
Together they hurried to the door to the stairwell that led to the second floor. Ken quickly unlocked it and they both stepped inside. Ken twirled the deadbolts into place.
They rushed up the long wooden staircase to the floor above.
“I hate today,” Ken said.
“I’m there with you,” Lenore agreed.
Unlocking the door to his apartment, Ken said, “We need to get a plan together. Stat.”
Lenore stopped on the step below him and took a deep breath. “Right now, I just wanna sit down for a minute and not think about it.”
Ken nodded and opened the door to his apartment.
Next door, they could hear Mr. Cloy screaming their names.
7.
The Fate of Mr. Cloy
The morning sun poured through the high windows of Ken’s apartment, filling the stylishly-decorated space with glorious light that illuminated the leather furniture and the art nouveau paintings that hung in antique frames on the walls. It was a perfect setting, except for Mr. Cloy’s voice screaming their names next door.
Ken drew in a few deep breaths and prayed to God it would be over soon. How long would it take for the zombies to kill Mr. Cloy? He felt tears sliding down his cheeks as the screaming continued. Next to him, Lenore sank down into a chair and put her face in her hands.
Together, they waited for the feeding frenzy to be over and prayed for Mr. Cloy’s screams to end.
Shaking, Ken sat down on the sofa and began to rearrange the fresh flowers in the china bowl on the coffee table. He couldn’t think of anything else to do and he just couldn’t sit still.
The screaming didn’t stop.
“Why won’t it end?” Lenore finally said.
Ken blinked, then whispered, “Oh, shit.” He realized Mr. Cloy wasn’t screaming because he was being eaten. He was screaming to get their attention.
Jumping to his feet, Ken indicated for Lenore to follow him to the room next to the front door. It was a room that he had yet to renovate. The roof had leaked and the wood was rotted and the walls moldy. The estimate on how much it would cost to renovate had been out of his price range so he had shut the door and pretended the room didn’t exist.
“The foundation settled a few years ago after a bad series of storms and the wall in here pulled away from the main part of the building. This section was an add- on.” Ken explained as he unlocked the door and shoved it open. “It used to be an open porch. Mr. Cloy’s building was built after this one and was built right up against it. A tornado during that big storm tore the second floor off of Mr. Cloy’s building except for the old storage room. They never rebuilt the second floor. They just fixed up what they could. I think I know what he’s doing.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but show me what the hell is going on,” Lenore snapped.
Ken pointed to a corner that was flush to Mr. Cloy’s building. There was yellowed caulk bubbling out of the crevice. “There is a crack in the wall that goes through to the storage room. My bastard ex put caulk here as a temporary fix.” The crack was almost two inches wide.
Mr. Cloy was still screaming their names.
“I think I gotcha,” Lenore said.
Together, they began to pull at the hard and dirty caulk with their fingers, then resorted to chipping it out with knives Ken retrieved from the kitchen. It took some hard work, but they finally got a section cleared out.
Pressing firmly against the wall, Ken could peer through the crack to the other side. Mr. Cloy’s eye was staring right back at him.
“Took you long enough,” Mr. Cloy’s lips said under his big bushy black mustache.
“We thought you were getting eaten,” Ken explained.
“They’re in the store, but I got two doors between them and me right now,” Mr. Cloy answered.
Lenore shoved Ken out of the way and said, “You got stuff to make this wider?”
“I don’t keep anything up here. You got something on your side?”
Lenore snorted. “Ken’s idea of tools is a knife for a screwdriver and a heel of his boots for a hammer.”
“Hey,” Ken protested, though it was true.
“It would take forever anyway. Got at least two feet of quarry rock and mortar between us. I’m gonna try and pry the bars off the window. The tornado did a lot of damage and they’re kinda loose already. If I can get onto the roof of the storage room, maybe you guys can haul me up onto the roof of your building. There ain’t no windows facing my way on your second floor.”
“Okay, let us know when you’re ready. That sounds like a decent enough plan. They ain’t in our building yet.” Lenore stepped away from the wall and gave Ken an annoyed look. “You do have rope, right?”
Ken hesitated then said meekly, “No. But we can tie sheets together.”
Lenore rolled her eyes and Ken ignored her to flatten himself against the wall to see Mr. Cloy one more time. “We’ll get you over here then make plans. We can do this!”
Mr. Cloy’s laughter was a welcome sound. “With you and Lenore on my side, I feel safe as a baby at his mama’s teat.”
“Ew,” Ken answered. “Baby slobber.”
This made Mr. Cloy laugh again as Ken saw him pull away from the crack to start work on the window. It sucked that they didn’t have a way to bash through the wall, but then again, if they made a hole in the wall and the dead guys got into the storage room...yep, it was better to haul him up onto the roof.
Ken left the room and found Lenore standing in his kitchen, calling her grandmother again. From the look on her face, he knew she had a busy signal again. It wasn’t uncommon for her grandmother to be on the phone chatting, but on a day like today, it was more than annoying.
Lenore clutched the phone tightly in her hand, then forced herself to set it down lightly. “She’s not answering.”
“Let’s get the rope ready,” Ken said in a voice he hoped sounded both soothing and strong.
With a curt nod, Lenore followed him to the linen closet. His silk and satin sheets were dismissed quickly. They would be far too slippery, but the new cotton sheets he had bought would suffice. It hurt to cut the 800 thread count sheets into long, wide strips, but at least they would be velvety soft against Mr. Cloy’s hands when he climbed onto their roof.
“You better not tear up over these sheets,” Lenore muttered at him.
“But they’re Egyptian cotton,” Ken sniffled.
“I’m so gonna punch you.”
They knotted the ends together and tested them by pulling as hard they could. Lenore solidly won the tug of war. Ken ended up in her arms and gave her his most demure smile. She rolled her eyes and tugged the makeshift rope out of his hands.
“I’ll go check on him.” Ken skipped back to the room before she could let him have it. He loved teasing Lenore. It was more fun than he cared to admit. Though she would grumpily respond, he could tell she liked it as much as he did. He pressed himself against the wall and shouted into the crack.
“Hey, Mr. Cloy!”
It took a moment, but Mr. Cloy’s eye and bushy mustache came into view beyond the narrow fissure in the wall. “They’re up to the second door now.”
Ken inhaled sharply and listened for a moment. What he had thought was Mr. Cloy trying to get a bar out of the window was the dead actually beating on the door. “Oh, shit. Are you ready?”
“Almost got the second one out. I should be able to crawl out after that. Give me five minutes.”
“Do you have five minutes?”
“Dunno. Done wasting time. See you up top,” Mr. Cloy answered, then vanished from view.
Trying not to wring his hands or run like a Nancy boy, Ken dashed out into the living room, feeling panic welling up inside of him. “They’re about to bust into the storage room. We need to get up on top!”
“Aw, shit. I hate today.”
Together they climbed the narrow staircase to the roof. Lenore muttered about it being too narrow, but Ken shushed her. He could feel his nerves getting the best of him and his hands were shaking. The old stairway was supposed to be for maintenance and it was musty and dusty. He never used it and he felt embarrassed with his lack of housekeeping. They reached the roof and he shoved open the door.
The small town swam into view and he felt overwhelmed by the bright, glaring sunlight. He shaded his eyes. What looked like a quiet serene Texas town at first blush soon revealed itself to be a place of death and destruction. A building was burning on the edge of town and in the streets people were running, screaming, and attacking each other. Car crashes littered intersections and somewhere nearby a woman was screaming.
It was hell.
“I really hate today,” Lenore muttered.
Together they hurried to the edge of the building and peered down at the small storage room that lay flush against Ken’s building. There was no sign of Mr. Cloy.
“Mr. Cloy! Mr. Cloy!” Their voices were a chorus and Ken noted his voice sounded quite high next to Lenore’s. His stomach churned and he felt his hands shaking as he gripped the edge of the building.
3.2 As the World Dies Untold Tales Vol. 2 Page 6
