Winter's Salvation

by Deyo, Jason

  “Get down,” a voice hollered to them and Sam laid over her mother. A shot rang out and the female ghoul was launched backwards and thrown to her back. It was back onto it’s hands and knees in a fraction of a second. The shot went through the right shoulder, but the frenzying ghoul still had function of its right arm. It got to it’s feet and began moving toward Naomi when another shot rang out.

  This time the zombie flew sideways and landed on its left side facing Sam and Naomi. The shot went through the back of the creature’s neck and now lay looking at the two of them. It let out a scream and ground it’s teeth, but made no move toward them. The ghoul’s milky eyes were fixed on the females, but her body laid motionless. She was paralyzed, but still wanted to destroy them. It had no care for itself and all it wanted to do was kill.

  Naomi got to her feet with the help of Sam and they started making their way to Mr. Cook. He turned his attention to the front of the house and let out a few more shots. After they were away from the fence and almost to the old man’s house, Mr. Cook turned his attention back to the paralyzed screaming ghoul and silenced it with a shot to the head.

  Mr. Cook is a short, solid, broad shoulder man with a thick charcoal colored beard. He wore blue corduroy shorts with black suspenders that stretched out wide around his large belly and wore a burgundy colored short sleeved button up shirt. Long socks covered his large calves and his dirty white shoes had mud caked on them.

  He would talk with Naomi often, but most of the time she tried to avoid him. He is a retired teacher and would always lend advice about her lawn and odd and end projects that she had no intention of ever starting. She had asked him on a couple occasions to help with unclogging a toilet or helping to install a few electric outlets. Mr. Cook is the man she has grown to enjoy living next to because of his handiness and willing to help in any situation, but only on her terms. She was very surprised to see the pacifistic retiree walk out of his house with a rifle and then actually use it.

  Mr. Cook’s house was an old beat up yellow rancher that looked as if it was built facing the wrong direction. What was supposed to be the front of the house was facing Naomi’s house, but they made it so the front porch attached to the kitchen. His house is the oldest house in the neighborhood and at one point in time the main road ran between their houses, but that was before Naomi’s house was built. As time went by the population grew and, so did the need for newer roads, so they removed the road and now Mr. Cooks home just look a little off from the current main road. Looking from the main road a huge garage is hidden by the rest of the house. The front roll up entrance to the garage along with the driveway was moved to face the back of the house.

  “I shot those things right in the chest and they just kept coming.” Mr. Cook said as he took Naomi’s hand and helped her up the front steps to the kitchen porch. The sound of multiple small dogs barking followed them as they moved from the once front of the house, that faced Naomi’s, to the new front that faced the road. “I saw it on the T.V. these people going crazy and you shouldn’t trust anyone, but since they were coming after you I just assumed you two were not a part of the crazies.”

  Gasping for breath Naomi thanked him as he led them into the kitchen. He pointed to one of the kitchen chairs with the tip of his rifle, “Grab that chair for your momma, darling.” As soon as they took their first steps into the house, three small fluffy white dogs came running up to them barking and jumping up, fighting one another for their attention. Mr. Cook tried shooing them away, with no results, so he slid one of them with his foot, just hard enough to send it sliding across the yellow linoleum. He then hollered something unintelligible to it and all three backed away to the edge of the kitchen and sat wagging their tails frantically with excitement.

  The kitchen was the exact same dirty yellow color as the siding on the house. Everything in the kitchen was designed with the same theme and that theme was the color yellow. Lemon wedges lined the boarders of the walls and yellow sun magnets littered the old refrigerator. On the sink was a green frog with a coarse yellow sponge sticking out of it’s mouth. Everything in the kitchen had some yellow design to it with the exception of the rolling chairs. The cushions are a hard brown plastic material that Naomi heard crack into hundreds of small pieces as the hard chair contoured stiffly to her body.

  Mr. Cook looked out the front kitchen window over the sink and said, “They got into the damn yard again. Those first two just pushed in my gate and now I see another one wandering in. That one I shot is getting back up too.” He ran his fingers over his balding head as if he were running them through thick flowing hair and then looked to his rifle. “I’ll be back.” He said as he left the kitchen.

  “You can’t go out there.” Naomi said spinning in the rolling chair.

  “Honey, I’m going to kill those things then lock the gate. I saw those things on the news and those things aren’t human. They’re likely to kill us if we don’t kill them.” With that he turned and took a closer look out the kitchen door’s window. “I’ll be right back.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen and down a dark hallway. Hollering through the house, “On the news I saw one guy biting people. They said if anyone has any scratches or open wounds not to let them into your house. They even said turn away family.” He returned and put a box of bullets on the table and started loading the magazine from his rifle. His hands were shaky, but found a undeniable comfortable skill when loading each round. “They said they can infect you with their virus if they bite or scratch you. Can you believe that, turn away family?” Smacking the magazine in the M1, he pulled back the bolt action, loading his rifle, and again looked out the window. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  He opened the door and looked out as if he were going to walk across a street; he looked left, right and then left again. Satisfied with his surroundings he brought the rifle to his shoulder, looked down the sights, stepped out onto the porch and fired.

  Sam and Naomi thought they heard him whisper after that shot. “Now stay down mother fucker.” That was followed by another shot.

  Sam closed the door and locked it. Looking out the window Mr. Cook just stepped down off the porch as his second shot sounded. There were three in the yard now and one was in front, walking with a brisk pace toward him when another shot fired and Sam witnessed its head disappear into a shower of debris that rained on the two that lacked behind. She let out a shriek and closed the curtains. Naomi held her hands out to her and squeezed her softly to avoid hurting her back any more than it already was.

  Multiple shots rang out and after a few minutes the door knob to the kitchen turned. Sam and Naomi turned to the door and Sam hesitantly reached for the curtains when she heard, “Hey let me in. I don’t appreciate being locked out of my own house.”

  She unlocked it quickly. He stepped in and wiped his feet on the welcome mat, as if he had just came in from the rain. “If I’m out there at least keep an eye on me, so if I have to come in, I don’t have to wait to be let in.”

  They both nodded in agreement and Mr. Cook pulled a chair up next to Naomi. “Honey, we’re going to have to fit you with some new cloths and we need to clean up your feet. You’re bleeding on my floor.”

  Naomi, completely dumbfounded at his comment looked down confused and saw that her feet were bloody from when she climbed the fence.

  “Go over and use the bath tub while we still have water pressure.” He said, loading his rifle again.

  “Thank you.” Naomi replied.

  **********

  “I know it’s not the most stylish thing in the world, but I have to imagine it is more comfortable than what you had on.” Mr. Cook said referring to Naomi’s new attire.

  She sat wearing a grey hooded sweat shirt that had a large picture of a bald eagle soaring over a mountain range and in big letters ALASKA printed on it. Blue jeans that were too large for her and a pair of white nurses shoes that were too big, but with the gauze wrappings around the fronts of her feet, gave the shoes a tight snug
feeling.

  They all sat in dim candle light in the wood paneling walled living room. Mr. Cook sat with his back to the kitchen in an old large brown rocking recliner and Sam and Naomi sat on the couch that was just under the window that faced Naomi and Sam’s house. Sam sat on her knees spreading the blinds with her index finger and thumb, trying to be sneaky, but filled with anxiety waiting to see something come to the fence from their house. The last Sam could see from this vantage point was more of the ghouls rummaging through the house. Before it got too dark Sam could have sworn she saw a creature moving around in her room, but now she could barely make out the chain link fence. The moon decided that tonight it would be unusually dark and the only reason she can see the fence is because when the wind blows, the fence will reflect a faint shimmer of light. With the shimmer of light came the wails and groans sailing through the wind of the undead in their house.

  “The clothes are fine and I thank you, so very much. We thank you, so very much. We don’t know what we would have done if you weren’t home.” Naomi put her hands in the pouch of the sweat shirt and leaned back gently. She looked up to the light that hung from the ceiling by a chain and watched as the candles bounced off the glass of the light.

  “Well you are more than welcome to stay here for as long as you’d like.” Mr. Cook said, “Did you have any plans? From here, I mean.”

  Sam glanced at her wanting to hear her response. “I was thinking about going to Sam’s fathers or heading to my parents place. My ex doesn’t live too far from here; a few miles down the road in Dunhaven and my parents live down by the Rail Way Tavern.” Sam was happy with the response.

  “Those apartments?” He asked.

  “Yes.”

  The old man rocked in his chair slowly, “The apartments were hit pretty hard. They have the highest concentration of people and a lot of people were trapped in their apartments.” He came to a stop, “It was on the news earlier.”

  Sam faced him and tears rolled from her eyes creating flowing rivers that rolled over her small cheeks. “We watched the news, that’s not true.”

  Quickly realizing he upset the little girl, “I could have been mistaken.” He said. “They didn’t show every complex and I had the T.V. turned down pretty low.” Sam didn’t say another word, but laid her head in her mother’s lap.

  They sat in a long silence until Sam noticed a Woman in a picture standing next to a younger Mr. Cook. “If you don’t mind me asking,” She said, “where is Mrs. Cook?” She knew there has never been another woman over his house since she had lived next to him, but never cared to know why, until now. As she asked, Naomi scowled at her.

  He started rocking again, “She passed away a few years ago.” He looked up to the ceiling as if he were thinking. “Three maybe four years. About two and a half years now I would say. Good thing probably, she wouldn’t be able to handle this. She passed in her sleep, in the hospital. She caught some type of bronchial virus and it spread to other parts of her body and just got worse. Something like that. There was some fancy name for what it was, but I just chose to forget those details. I focus on the good times we had and the later days just seemed to happen. I haven’t thought about it in a long time, really. As soon as she passed I focused on all the good things and all the news I’m going to have to tell her when I see her again.” He smiled a little with the left side of his mouth.

  “Sorry to hear that. I’m sure if she were here she would feel safe with you on watch.” Naomi said.

  “No. She wouldn’t.” He paused, “She worried about everything that she could do nothing about, but when it was time for here to worry she didn’t. It’s fine though, I will be going up there probably sooner than later now and if it happens I’m ready to go. I would prefer not to go out as one of them, but my soul will go to heaven and then I will be with her again.”

  Feeling a little awkward of the path the conversation had taken, Sam decided to change the subject. “You could come with us if you would like to.”

  “Ah maybe, I guess it depends on what happens here. If it gets overrun here, I don’t want to be eaten alive, so I may take you up on the offer.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and puts them on the table. “I’ll leave these here just in case you need to leave quickly and I for whatever reason can’t make it. These are for the truck in the garage”

  “Why wouldn’t you be able to make it?” Naomi asked, as if nothing outside the house was happening.

  “I’m an old man and the ticker just might stop working. You never know.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and then a long pause. Looking down at his feet while he rocked in the recliner, “Do you think you would go to hell if you took yourself out? I mean if I were to be bit, and to avoid becoming one of them, I killed myself. Would my soul go to hell?”

  “Well you may actually be saving a life if you did that, so maybe God would think that was admirable.” Naomi replied.

  “I think your right.” He stood up from the recliner and groaned. “You two take the guest bedroom. The bed is made and it is pretty cozy in there. I’ll be sleeping in the room directly across from you, but check on the house periodically. I haven’t been able to sleep a full thirty minutes without having to use the bathroom anyway.” He gave a fake laugh.

  Naomi smiled as he walked out of the living room. She cradled Sam while she laid in her lap. “Lets try to get some sleep.” Sam rolled over and sat on the couch rubbing the dried crusted tears from her eyes.

  They both walked into the spare bedroom and got into the queen bed and listened as the wind carried the groans of the undead through the breeze. Sam quickly fell asleep as she lay pouting, but Naomi stirred as a dull pain traveled up her back to her neck.

  The moon was shining directly through the space between each individual plastic slat of the blinds on her window. Striped shadows shown across the small guest bedroom and the compulsion of not closing her eyes for fear that she will see a shadow within those stripes, played on her mind. When she would close them, she could feel someone standing on the other side of the window. She got up from the bed multiple times that night just to spread two pieces of the blinds, ever so slowly and slightly expecting to see something in the yard, but only saw a beautiful scene of the woods and swaying leaves in the trees.

  Chapter 6

  Just picking up a few things

  They stayed in the town house for four more days after the realization of what was going on. Eric didn’t believed what Dave had told him until he witnessed the woman that was mauled to death start to move. She didn’t have much to move, but she did. Both of her legs were missing, she lost one of her arms and the other was, so badly mauled all she could do was roll over to her empty stomach and push herself in small circles. For three days Eric watched, as she stayed in the same spot in the alley spinning in awkward circles trailing her exposed intestines, screaming. The first day it was a blood curtailing scream, as if she were still being eaten alive. The zombie would turn down the alley way and start screaming, then it just suddenly stopped. They would all look out the window to see what happened and realized she was turning to face the other end of the alley and as soon as she turned completely around the screaming commenced again.

  There were many times throughout the first and second days were they all just wanted to smash her head in, but did not want to take the risk of being seen. Sometime late the second day the screaming started to die down and turned into mumbles and low groaning. She stopped spinning as much, and her movements seemed like they were becoming difficult to perform.

  Every once in a while a fellow zombie would walk by and glance at it’s friend on the ground; just a glance and nothing more. They were no longer running wildly through the streets, but now moved slowly and clumsily. When they looked down at her, sometimes they would lose their balance and go crashing into a fence and fight to stand up, usually with a groan or mumble of some type.

  Around noon of the second day the fires in front had turned into embers of
burnt flesh and smoking hot metal from the cars. There were very few walkers on the streets and they seemed to walk aimlessly past one another not acknowledging each other. Many of the town houses now had broken doors or windows and with every broken door there was a trail of blood that led into or out of them. With every broken window, chunks of flesh hung from the sills. This once happy neighborhood was now dark and full of misery. There were still a few houses that seemed like they were all right or still intact at least. The windows may have been broken, but there seemed to be a table or something pressed up against it to keep the undead out. On occasion the sound of screaming or a gunshot would break the silence and all the undead would shamble in that direction.

  They planned to leave the next day, but breaking into a safe quietly took a lot longer than any of them thought it would and it had started to rain. None of them were thrilled about starting their journey wet. It took them the entire day to finally open the door and to their surprise the only thing that laid in it was a lever action 22. rifle and two boxes of bullets which now were open and bullets laid scattered in the safe. Eric had seen it before, but expected the 12. gauge shot gun and a pistol to be in there as well. There were no signs that his roommates were here before them and why they would lock the safe.

  The 22. was one that you would see in one of the classic western movies. Wood grain stock with a golden lever and a gold receiver embroidered with the classic looking swirl engraved in the receiver. Eric never really held the gun and was disappointed in how light it really was. Dave had to show him how to load it and how to aim the rifle, but they did not fire it. Eric grew up in the city and had never had an opportunity to actually fire a rifle let alone ever actually having to do so.