Zombies Inside

by Rebecca Besser

  When Rachel reached the house she desired, the broken widows and wide open door made her hope sink like a stone to the pit of her stomach. Still, she walked up the stairs that led to the backdoor of the home and entered. Her footfalls were silent, her breath coming in small tight gasps.

  She didn’t know what to expect, and she’d only been in the house once before, for the baby shower. She was pleased to see that the backdoor entered into the kitchen, similar to her own home. She instantly went to the cabinets and opened them.

  They were empty.

  With a sigh, she moved to the pantry – still nothing. All the shelves were completely bare. There were two more places she knew she would have to check before she left: the nursery and the basement. If anything was still here to be found, it would be in one of those places, she was sure.

  Rachel stood still in the kitchen and listened for any noise from within the house. There was a small creak and a distant, dull, rhythmic bang, but nothing seemed immediate or particularly dangerous.

  She headed upstairs to where she knew the nursery would be, on the second floor. The banging sound increased in its intensity, but she wasn’t overly concerned. When she made it to the top of the stairs, she saw what was making the noise – a door stood ajar and was banging on the wall from a slight breeze coming through an open window she spied just beyond when the door moved. The room the door belonged to appeared to be the master bedroom, so she chose the door closest to it, turned the knob, pushed the door open, and entered the room.

  Her hand instantly rose to her mouth as a gasp escaped her lips. She’d found the nursery . . . and wished she hadn’t.

  Everything was coated with dark dried blood and little bones lay everywhere with thin, dried scraps of meat still clinging to them. There were enough of them to be all three of the babies who had once slept in the room.

  Rachel gagged and tried to blink away the tears that sprang to her eyes. She backed toward the door with her eyes darting about in panic and horror; they fell on a shelf in the far corner with five large cans of powdered baby formula and she paused. She needed it. Troy needed it.

  She schooled her emotions the best she could and willed herself to step over the haunts of carnage and move toward what she’d come for. With shaking hands, she lifted and inserted the cans into the empty bag she carried.

  There was a slight creak behind her, which she assumed was the door in the breeze from the hallway, so she paid it no mind. Once she turned, she realized the mistake she’d made in her complacency and grief.

  In the doorway, swaying slightly from side to side were the forms of the slain triplets’ parents. Rachel only knew it was them by the ripped and stained clothing that hung from their forms; it was familiar. They faces were decayed to the point of being unrecognizable.

  “Oh, God,” Rachel breathed, struggling around the bag’s shoulder strap to reach the pistol she had strapped to her side.

  Upon her utterance, they growled and darted toward her with their arms outstretched.

  Rachel dropped the bag of formula, raised the pistol, and discharged a round into the head of the male zombie, as he was the closest.

  Stepping back quickly to take aim at the other zombie, she tripped over the straps of the duffle bag and fell into the rotted remains of one of the babies. She flinched, knowing what lay beneath her. In that moment, when her eyes closed for less than half a second, the zombie-woman dove down over her.

  Rachel swung the gun up to defend herself and the zombie grabbed her arm and bit her wrist.

  She screamed as pain vibrated through her arm and kicked the once mother off herself. She whipped the pistol up and fired two quick shots that hit the zombie woman in the neck and head. She went down hard.

  Blood was flowing freely from Rachel’s arm; the wound was deep. She looked around her for something, anything to staunch the flow.

  Her mind refused to accept what had just happened to her beyond patching herself up enough to make it back to Troy. She blocked out what the bite meant, hoping against the inevitable that things would be okay. She’d seen zombie movies. She knew to shoot them in the head and she knew bites transferred the infection to new specimens. She’d also heard those same things in the news, verifying the myths of horror.

  She found a baby blanket under her leg, tore it into strips, and then wrapped it around her wrist.

  Rachel was lightheaded from blood loss and pain. Once her wound was wrapped, she allowed herself to fall back and lay down. Tears ran freely from her eyes. Her imagination told her what dark things had transpired in this house, this very room, months before . . . The parents had become zombies, the father probably bringing the sickness home when he returned from work, attacking his wife once he’d succumb. Together, they’d eaten their own live young. The very idea made her sick to her stomach, but she knew that if she returned to Troy, having been bitten herself, she would do the same thing.

  As she lay there, she came up with a plan. The plan had less threads of hope than the one she’d set out to preform today; it would be more precarious and she would have to hurry if it were to have a chance at success.

  ***

  Rachel stumbled back downstairs with the duffle bag half-full of cans of powdered formula. Zombies were everywhere on the ground level, having been drawn by the sound of gunfire. None of them showed her any attention past a quick sniff; they recognized her as one of them. She was glad of this, but saddened by it at the same time. Their indifference made it easier for her to make her way home, but made it clear that she was quickly being taken over by the zombie infection.

  She would soon be one of them . . . too soon.

  She couldn’t believe how many of them there were, when before, she’d seen none. By her estimation there were close to a hundred zombies now roaming the street between her house and the one where she’d been. The danger that had lurked around her had been more real than she’d understood. Her feeble attempt at finding supplies had been doomed from the beginning.

  She made her way back to her house as fast as she possibly could. When she arrived, she found everything as she’d left it. She was weak from blood loss and fever and it took her longer to move the table out of the way than it had previously, but she still managed; she completely ignored the barricade bar that clattered loudly on the floor. Her plan ran in a jumbled sequence through her mind, and she applied all of her focus to preforming it.

  She took none of the care now that she’d shown before. She practically ran down the stairs to the basement and burst through the door to see that Troy was still sleeping. Quickly, she scooped him and his blanket up and charged back up the stairs, stumbling slightly near the top; she reached out and steadied herself against the wall for a moment to regain her balance.

  Troy stirred in her arms, but didn’t fully awaken. Her touch and her scent were familiar to him, so he wasn’t alarmed at being moved.

  Rachel was grateful Troy stayed quiet; it was going to be hard enough to get him through the continuously growing crowd of the undead if he were to cry.

  Once she was again outside, she kept her distance and skirted as many of the zombies as she could. When she was away from most of them, she checked the cars in the street, one at a time, for keys hanging from the ignition. When she found one that looked promising, she gingerly opened the door, sat down in the driver’s seat, and turned the key.

  Nothing happened.

  She choked down a sigh and moved forward, still searching for keys. She found one that would start after three more vain attempts. The noise of the engine starting woke Troy, who began to cry. The noise of both turned most of the zombies, now a quarter mile away, in their direction. She didn’t care though, since she and Troy began to move swiftly away in the car.

  ***

  Rachel’s vision was getting cloudy and she knew it wouldn’t be long. But, much to her despair, she’d found nothing to indicate the existence of other people who had survived. Her plan had been to turn Troy over to someone who coul
d take care of him since she would no longer be able to.

  She drove until she couldn’t any longer. She felt herself growing weaker and the world further and further away.

  She brought the car to a stop and stared out of the windshield. Troy had just woken up again and was fussing. He grabbed at her and clutched her clothes in his small hands, snuggling close to her.

  She could smell his blood . . . his life, and she wanted it. Her lips peeled back from her teeth and she hissed low and deep; it didn’t faze Troy.

  With a sob, she realized she was becoming as horrible as the couple who’d killed and eaten their own triplets. She didn’t want to be like that. She didn’t want her end, or Troy’s, to be like that. She’d failed to find a safe place for him and now she was turning into one of the monsters she most feared. She didn’t want Troy’s end to be that violent . . . that painful.

  Her options were limited. She knew she could keep him alive, despite her upcoming death and reanimation, but that would probably still lead to his death in the end. He would starve if she locked him inside the car with the hope that someone would find him before it was too late.

  There was only one option left to them both; it would be the end to every dream of hope she’d ever had, but it was all her fevered brain could come up with.

  Rachel pulled Troy into her arms and rubbed her nose against his; he quieted at the gesture of comfort and love.

  “I love you, sweetness,” Rachel whispered as her other hand reached for the pistol at her side.

  Before he could squirm, and before she could change her mind, she raised the gun, pressed the barrel to the back of Troy’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  The explosive sound of the gun firing a round was deafening in the confined space of the car.

  Pain erupted from Rachel’s ears and face, but the world didn’t go dark as she’d expected.

  The bullet didn’t quite do as she’d wanted . . . The round had silenced her children forever, but had merely blown a hole in her cheek. She’d wanted a final end for them both.

  In pain, in grief, with her ears ringing, she laid Troy’s body on the seat beside her, averting her eyes from his face. With violently shaking hands, she slipped the barrel of the pistol in her mouth and closed her eyes. The metal vibrating against her teeth from her shaking hand resounded through her skull, until, on an exhale, she pulled the trigger, effectively ending her own life and ensuring she wouldn’t eat her own offspring.

  About the story from Rebecca Besser:

  “When Plans Fail first appeared in the Fading Hope anthology in 2014. I was invited to write for this book (because I know cool people who invite other cool people to such projects) and was told that I had to write a story with no hope. Yeah, it had to be depressing. Logically, there are a lot of situations and lives that would end in such tragic ways as to never really have a hope of survival.

  First, I took the biggest symbol of hope I could find (a small child) and then made it obvious that hope could not be sustained (literally). Then I took that hope away.

  I think the tragedy of this story hit the nail on the head, so to speak, for the “no hope” theme. I hope you agreed!”

  HIGH PRICE FOR HOPE

  By Rebecca Besser

  Jerrold Brown sat by the small fire burning in a fifty-five-gallon barrel that had been cut in half. He watched his wife across the room, tucking in their son and daughter. Sighing deeply, he looked into the fire, thinking about Christmas. It was hard to believe it had been a year since the zombies had appeared; it was the worst Christmas Eve he’d ever experienced. He still remembered tucking the kids in that night, trying to get them to fall asleep so Santa would come. But he’d never arrived, just the rotting corpses of the animated dead.

  With another sigh, Jerrold rubbed his face with both hands. His wife, Dawn, drew the blanket curtain they used to partition off the kids sleeping area closed and joined him by the fire.

  “What’re you thinking about?” she asked quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “I’m thinking Christmas will be here in a couple of days,” he mumbled.

  “And?”

  “I think it’s sad that we don’t have any presents for the kids. Last year they didn’t get to open the presents we bought for them – we were too busy fighting for our lives. After a year of being sequestered in this basement we’ve lost all sense of hope.”

  “What are you getting at?” Dawn asked with a suspicious look on her face.

  Jerrold dragged his hands through his hair, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. He knew she wouldn’t like what he was going to say next.

  “I’m going to go out and get the kids presents. They deserve to have a decent Christmas, no matter what the condition of the world.”

  He heard her gasp, but didn’t look up, just rushed on.

  “We need food, too. I should have gone a week ago. You know it as well as I do. I might as well see if I can find some presents while I’m out there. Who knows, maybe all the zombies are gone, moved on to somewhere else in search of people to eat.”

  Jerrold looked up at his wife, dreading what he might see in her expression. Tears were sliding down her sallow cheeks. It hit him again just how much they’d suffered, how much they’d had to go without. Clenching his jaw, he decided, be damned all danger, he was going to make this Christmas special for all of them no matter what she said.

  Dawn’s eyes were trained on the fire. The shifting light from the tongues of flame licking at the wood that feed it sent shadows dance over her features. She was upset. He could see that from the tightness of her jaw.

  “Sweetie,” he said, caressing her wet cheek. “I have to do something. I can’t bear them not having some joy in their lives. What kind of existence is that for a child?”

  Closing her eyes, she pressed her face into his hand and took a shuddering breath. “It’s too dangerous. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t lose me,” he said, taking her into his arms and kissing the top of her head. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  “I can’t bear even the thought of losing you,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms tightly around him. “It’s not worth the risk. I don’t want you to go. Stay for me, please.”

  Jerrold took a deep breath and rubbed her back, tears coming to his own eyes at her pleading. He eyes fell on a stick that was jutting out from beneath the curtain to the kids sleeping area. It was crudely carved to resemble a human. He remembered making them for the kids for their birthdays. Their eyes had lit up and it was the only time he remembered seeing genuine smiles on their faces since they’d been down in their safe haven.

  Squeezing Dawn tight, he whispered, “I have to do it – for the kids. They should have something to play with, something to enjoy. All they play with are those damn sticks, or what they can draw on the cement floor with charred pieces of wood from the fire. They should have more. They deserve more. What kind of childhood are we giving them?”

  She pulled back and looked him in the face defiantly.

  “We are giving them the best childhood we can under the circumstances,” she hissed. “It’s not like we have a choice. We’re doing the best we can with what we have. Those damn zombies took everything from us, but we have our lives and we have each other. That should be enough.”

  “Believe me,” he said. “I am grateful that we’re all alive and together, and I’ll never be able to express how glad I was that we found somewhere that had a good supply of food and water to stay, but it’s Christmas. I really need you to understand and support me in this. I need to do it, for all of us.”

  Dawn clutched at the front of Jerrold’s threadbare shirt, kneading it in her almost skeletal hands. Tears ran freely down her face and dropped on her shirt, also threadbare and almost sheer in its overuse. Choking back a sob, she buried her face in his neck and whimpered. She took a couple of minutes to get herself under control before she spoke in a pained whisper.

  “When will you go?
”

  Wrapping his arms around her and rocking her gently, he mumbled into her hair, “In the morning. It’ll be Christmas Eve. I’ll arrive back just in time to put the presents under the tree, just like Santa.”

  He laughed at the irony of the thought as he too choked back sobs.

  She nodded against his chest and clutched at him, not wanting to let go, not wanting to think about what the morning would bring, when her husband would leave their den of safety and venture out into the world that held who knew what.

  They sat by the fire, crying and holding each other for hours before they added a couple more pieces of wood to the fire and went to bed. Even though they’d been careful about sex, using condoms to make sure that Dawn wouldn’t get pregnant – which they’d run out of a couple of weeks ago – they made love that night, throwing caution to the wind. The action was full of desperation. They spoke to each other with their bodies, conveying their love and their need to be with each other, hoping that the bond they created would be stronger than the separation they would face in the morning, stronger than the fear of never seeing each other again.

  ***

  The next morning Jerrold was up and dressed before the kids awoke. He kissed them gently on their foreheads, brushed back their hair, and said a quick prayer for them. Behind him he heard the sound of Dawn’s bare feet padding softly across the cement floor. She paused at the curtain and sighed heavily. He could feel the tension radiating from her. Turning, he stepped up to her and wrapped his arms around her, hiding his face in her hair.