And the Blood Ran Black

by Nathan E. Harvey

  Brooke wanted to cover Hillary’s ears but saw that the girl was paying no attention, just staring glossy-eyed at the cuckoo clock with a small smile.

  “Happy is nothing more than a decision,” Virgil aimed the purest smile John had yet seen him display toward Marie. “Just because I don’t skip around smiling like a fool doesn’t mean I’m not happy. The good Lord just didn’t put me together like that. But every morning, I wake up, I pray my thanks for everything in my life worth having, which takes a while, mind you, and by the time I’m finished, it’s a pretty easy decision that I’ve come to. I’m not just content. I’m happy.”

  No one spoke.

  “Sorry, I rambled. That’s why I don’t talk much. You can’t get me started. I don’t know if I even made any sense there. But take it for what it’s worth. Advice is the only thing us old farts are good for anymore.”

  “And winning a fortune at poker, apparently,” Moto added.

  Hillary had finally begun nodding off, and the back of her head was coming closer and closer to hitting Brooke in the nose. John re-took control of his stack, what little remained of it, and Brooke took Hillary to bed upstairs. Before long, the game was over, and Virgil had collected his effective nightly rent from the two brothers. More speculation dragged on about frontal lobes, Amygdalae, and, thanks to Moto’s knowledge of Adam Sandler classics, the Medulla Oblongata. Occasionally, the conversation would be interrupted by the echoes of gunfire, and, eventually John quit investigating each occurrence. Later, once the wisdom being shared had degraded into ranting, the group decided to all turn in. John again offered to take first watch, and, after the recent occurrences outside, he’d decided to include the roof in his rounds so that he could also survey the condition of the neighborhood.

  As Brooke lay in bed and listened to the hypnotically rhythmic breathing from Hillary, she reflected back on the horrors of the day and contemplated how she had come away from such a scene in the way that she had. Not even a week ago, such an event would have crippled her emotionally and left her as more of a liability than the asset she now knew herself to be for this hodgepodge of survivors. She wondered if being thrust into such despair at the hospital that first night had brought about her fight-or-flight instincts and somehow prepared her for the future horrors that were still to come. After some consideration, she decided that it wasn’t so much her own doing, though that was certainly a factor. She contemplated how it was that, for each thing she had lost of her old life, she knew that there was even more being gained in the full Jensen home. She admitted to herself that any personal growth that was likely to come from her relationship with her sister paled in comparison to the potential future she had with this new family. Little Hillary. Already, she would die to save Hillary. Mr. and Mrs. Jensen, the grandparents she had never even realized she’d been missing. John… she took pause at the thought of John. Even without having any inclination as to what his thoughts of her truly were, she admitted to herself that he was perhaps the greatest personal gain amidst all of the losses. For the first time, the prince in her daydreams now had a face and a name. Whether or not it would play out was another matter. For now, she believed that maybe she could have a future with someone, and that was enough… for now.

  John was finally comfortable and not slipping down across the loose granules of the old shingles during his vigil on the roof. He had retrieved his backpack and secured one of the hiking straps around the exhaust vent pipe that protruded from the roof to hold him in place as he watched the movements of the night in silence. From out here, the gunfire downtown was even more audible, though distant enough to be of little consequence. He thought about all of the people that were dying in each brief moment that he sat in peace--thought about the other countries and what kinds of unthinkable horrors were being carried out on a global scale. When he was callous and bored of these morbid thoughts, he found himself thinking of happier things--things that were worth fighting for and, more importantly, worth living for. The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him. He wondered for a moment if that quote was also from Sun Tzu, but those thoughts eventually gave way to images of seductively flowing locks of long, brunette hair, and the paralyzing, seductive batting of infectiously green eyes. And then, the day’s weight overtook John, and he slept.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

  John awoke to darkness and the sound of Hillary crying from inside the house. In a rush, he sprung back inside the second story window to see Moto still sleeping deeply despite the noise and the lights being back on. John went toward Brooke’s room where he expected he’d find Hillary. Instead, he found her sobbing on the hallway floor next to the bedroom door. A barely awake Brooke was kneeling next to her and consoling the girl while rubbing her back.

  “What is it sweetheart?” Brooke asked.

  Hillary calmed herself enough to get the words out. “The ‘lectricity woke me up, and I thought it would be a good time to use the restroom, but, when I opened the door, I saw Daddy in there throwing up and bleed was coming out his eyes.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t cry. I’m sure he’s okay,” John said in his most comforting voice. “I’ll go check on him now, and you just go ahead and lay back down with Brooke while I talk with him, okay?”

  Without waiting for her response, John shut their door and walked to the now closed bathroom door. Hearing some slight commotion on the other side, John knocked and tried to garner some kind of response from Steve to confirm that he was still in his right mind. Though his voice sounded anything but normal, Steve responded with as much comprehension and logic as John could have hoped for. He claimed that he had eaten too much in a brief moment of feeling well and assured John that he was fine. John asked that Steve remain in the bathroom for the time being while he went downstairs to raid the medicine cabinet for something that might help Steve sleep more comfortably through the rest of the night.

  Before entering the kitchen, John jumped back in a startle when he heard movement in the room and saw flickers of light from what he thought to be a flashlight dance across the linoleum floor. John cautiously leaned around the corner before realizing that the vertical blinds covering the sliding glass door which led into the back yard had been blown into one another by the air conditioner. Just as he stood up straight, John felt a presence directly behind him, and spun around to find Marie. She explained between breaths that she had come to investigate all of the commotion going on upstairs when she saw his silhouette slinking around. Realizing that he had scared Marie even more than she had scared him, John apologized and attempted to explain himself. She assured him that it was no big deal and began to pour a glass of milk for herself while John peeked in between the dancing blinds. John saw that the source of the dancing light had been nothing more than the garage’s flood light which was pointed at their back porch. John laughed to himself and explained that he had thought that it was a flashlight that was showing in through the blinds and into the kitchen.

  He continued to summarize all that had occurred upstairs until Marie interrupted.

  “Wait, which light was it shining through the blinds?” She asked.

  “Just the flood light over on the corner,” John answered.

  John didn’t understand the horror that spread across Marie’s face until she whispered, “John, that’s a motion light. It only comes on if something’s in the yard.”

  When John turned to look again past the blinds, he was sure that he had caught just a glimpse of a silhouette out on the back porch. It had only been a small hint of a person between the slats of swinging plastic, but he was sure of what he had seen. Just as John reached for the door’s lock, the electricity again went out, sweeping the back yard back into total blackness. John still stepped outside without hesitation and pulled his phone from his pocket to try and light up the unknown intruder. He couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary but for a whippoorwill’s call. The phone wasn’t bright enough to be of much he
lp, and John twisted his ankle on something hidden by the grass. Bending down to inspect, John saw that he’d stepped on the handle of Virgil’s axe and decided to keep it handy while he cleared the rest of the back yard. After a brief, unfruitful search of the porch, a scream rang out from upstairs that John knew must belong to Brooke. He slung the sliding door closed behind him as he hurried through the kitchen and up the stairs toward the sounds of panic, still clutching to the axe.

  Moto met him at the top of the stairs.

  “You’ve gotta get Hillary outside,” he said. “Steve is doing really bad. He locked himself in the bathroom and he won’t answer us.”

  The dog began barking from his spot on the porch. Before they could react, the crash of shattering glass rang out from downstairs, and Marie cried out for them all to run. Her yelling transitioned into screams of horror that were then overcome by the sounds of gargling. A steady, familiar moan resonated up the stairwell, accompanied by the sounds of ripping flesh.

  “Shit!” Moto exclaimed. “They got her. They’re in the house.”

  John rushed over to his bedroom window, and stuck his head out to survey the scene from above and settle on an escape route. Outside, a large horde of zombies was barely visible staggering about in the moonlight. A Jeep loaded with survivors unloaded a barrage of bullets into the horde as they fled.

  “Okay, we’re gonna have to do something else,” John said with a forced, unnatural calmness to his voice. “They’re covering the whole neighborhood.”

  When Steve began to bang at the bathroom door and moan that now familiar moan, John rushed the others into a bedroom and had them barricade the door from the inside. He told Moto that he was going back for Virgil and not to leave the girls no matter what. Downstairs, John saw that more than one zombie had come through the sliding glass door that had not fully latched, and were still chewing at Marie’s lifeless body. One tugged with its clenched jaws at a long strand of intestines and pulled its head back like a howling wolf. Ducking his head into each door along the hallway, John finally found Virgil retrieving a gun from underneath his bed, muttering expletives to himself for not being more prepared.

  “C’mon, we’ve gotta go,” John urged. “They’re surrounding the house. We have to get out now.”

  Virgil followed as quickly as his old joints would allow, while still loading rounds into the bottom of his 12 gauge. John wedged his axe firmly into the skull of the leading zombie and forced it to fall back into the others with a forceful push of the lodged axe’s handle. It wasn’t until he was to the stairs that John realized Virgil had been unable to tear his attention away from what remained of his departed wife. Ignoring John’s calls, Virgil began unloading rounds into the undead men in the kitchen. After the zombies had ceased with their futile attempts at getting back up, Virgil made his way over to John. As they reached the top of the stairs, though, there stood Steve. Somehow he’d apparently dislodged whatever had wedged the bathroom door closed, and Steve now stood at the top of the stairs facing John and Virgil with demonic, soulless eyes.

  Virgil raised the gun and pulled the trigger without hesitation, but instead of a deafening blast, there was only a click. The two men scurried back down the stairs and heard crunching glass as more of the zombies entered the kitchen. From behind, they could hear a series of thumps as the uncoordinated Steve tumbled down the stairs and toward the living room. Without time to think, Virgil shoved John into the entry’s closet and joined him inside. The two tried to remain as quiet as possible while Virgil loaded more shells from his pockets into the gun.

  “I’ll clear you a path,” Virgil said. “Wait until it’s clear and you get back up them stairs and save those girls.”

  “What about you?” John asked. “You’ll be right behind me, won’t you?”

  “You just worry about what you hafta do,” Virgil whispered.

  Without any theatrics, Virgil slid back out of the closet and over toward the kitchen. He first took out the two zombies there with just one shot apiece to the head. Then he swung around and killed the momentum of a lunging Steve with a shot to the chest that blew straight through him and out the window behind. Virgil took careful aim and fired at Steve’s head just as another zombie grabbed him from behind. The aim was compromised, but the scatter shot still grazed Steve tearing off a large chunk of his face.

  “Get to it!” Virgil yelled as he thrust the butt of his shotgun into the zombie behind him, breaking its grasp.

  John sprinted from the closet and past the severely hobbled Steve to the bottom of the stairs where he turned to call for the old man. Loud cheery songs rang out from the bird in the cuckoo clock on the wall just next to Virgil. He grabbed at the pendulum and was eventually able to silence the noise by clutching the pine cone shaped weights, but more zombies were already pouring in through the kitchen and the now shattered living room window between him and the stairs. The gunfire and commotion were attracting dozens of zombies in from the street.

  “You can make it,” John whispered loudly while kicking away a zombie.

  Virgil glanced back at his wife’s corpse as it began to move again and, without a word, calmly started loading the last of his shells into the gun. He looked up at John and shook his head slowly with an undaunted demeanor.

  “Don’t waste this chance,” Virgil said. “You make it count.”

  John admitted to himself that there was no longer any realistic chance of getting out of the house with Virgil alive and forced himself to refocus on just getting the girls and Moto to safety. Once they had unbarricaded the door and let John in, they began bombarding him with questions about a plan and about the conditions of Steve and Virgil. John considered lying but, before even acknowledging the others, he found himself already climbing completely out the window. Seeing that the situation on the street hadn’t much improved, John scurried to the crest of the angled roof to search in all directions for their best chance at survival. It didn’t take long for him to come to the realization that they were not going to be able to make it anywhere on foot, and John climbed back down into the bedroom.

  “I might have an idea, but it’s kind of risky,” John said.

  “Well it’s better than what we’ve been able to come up with,” Moto answered. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Girls, block this door again as soon as Moto and I leave. I don’t know how bad it’s gotten down there, but we have to run downstairs and get something.”

  “Please hurry back,” Brooke pleaded. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

  John and Moto paused outside the door while Brooke pushed the furniture back into place, and John explained to Moto that there was an axe in the kitchen that they would need. Luckily, it appeared that Virgil had taken out several more of the zombies before finally being overtaken. John navigated his way to the stuck weapon, and Moto was able to hold the remaining zombies at a safe distance with strategic kicks to their chests. By the time John had retrieved the axe, there were already several more zombies piling in behind them and closely pursuing the two brothers up the stairs. Moto sprinted to the girls’ bedroom and began calling out and pounding on the door for them to remove the barricade.

  “No, leave it. There’s no time!” John yelled.

  He pushed his way into the adjacent bedroom, and blocked the door after Moto had made it safely inside. Outside the door, it sounded as if dozens of the undead were accumulating.

  “Stand back from the wall!” John yelled with his mouth against the shared bedroom wall. “We’re coming in.”

  In what turned out to be surprisingly quick work, John used the axe to cut through the sheet rock and make a path back into the girls’ room. The joy of their reunion was tamed, as no one but John understood how their situation had improved in the slightest.

  It wasn’t until John had backed them all away from the center of the room and began to hack away at the floor that Moto understood what John had in mind.

  “We’re right over the garage,” Moto sa
id aloud as soon as he realized it. “You’re a genius, John.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” John said between gasps for air.

  As the hole was beginning to take shape, the zombies began to push with enough force to compromise both barricaded doors. Moto began throwing every remaining piece of furniture into piles around the doorways, praying that they would be able to buy enough time for John. The zombies were eventually able to force open the hastily blocked door in the adjacent room and began approaching the wall’s opening. Though the hole wasn’t as wide as he would’ve liked, John redirected his swings to the heads of the approaching zombies while Moto lowered the girls down into the bed of the truck.

  “My keys to the van are in the kitchen,” Brooke yelled up to John once she was safely standing on the garage’s concrete floor. “I didn’t realize it until now.”

  John tossed the truck keys down into its bed and yelled for everyone to load up and start the engine as he continued to fend off the intruders. Once the massive 6.4-liter engine had roared to life, John jumped down into the truck’s bed and yelled for Moto to drive. The truck plowed through the flimsy garage door just as a zombie flung itself down the hole after John, catching its chin on the top of the tailgate and violently slamming to the concrete. John curled into a fetal position in the corner next to the truck’s cab to avoid the flying debris as they sped through the massive mob of undead.

  “Wait!” John screamed from the back of the truck as they turned onto the less congested street. Moto slammed on the brakes and turned to look at John--and then in the direction John was watching. Their dog was tugging hard at its leash which was tethered to one of the porch rocking chairs. John called out to encourage the dog and whistled as best he could. The dog lowered its head and pulled harder, dragging the chair behind him until the leash was freed from its leg as the chair tumbled down the steps. The zombies observed the dog as it sprinted and juked around them, but showed little interest in pursuing him. The dog leapt up into John’s waiting arms above the lowered tailgate just before the nearest zombie had reached the truck. John strained, slammed the tailgate closed from inside, and thought to himself that perhaps Lucky was an appropriate name for the dog after all.