Dying Days Ultimate Box Set 1

by Armand Rosamilia

  As if to mock her predicament, a dolphin breeched in the water of the Matanzas Inlet outside the French doors and some fifty feet below.

  She heard loud noises from the ground floor and went back to the balcony to investigate. Steve, or what used to be Steve, was clomping up the stairs toward the second floor. His face was a bloody mess and his clothes torn and tattered.

  Had he been turned that quickly? How did he get into the house? He must have found the hidden key under the fake rock in the garden. Angel shivered. The creep had probably seen her use it and known about it for some time. He probably came into the house when she wasn’t home. She didn’t even want to think about him being in her bedroom.

  A fresh supply of adrenaline flooded her veins.

  Angel didn’t know if zombies could think or remember, but this was not the time to find out.

  Steve had reached the second floor and was now shuffling toward the winding staircase to the third floor…and her.

  She retreated back into the bedroom and weighed her options.

  Her eyes locked on the French doors and the deck outside. Could she go over the rail and climb three stories down to the ground? She decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

  The master bath would offer no protection and the office beyond it was also no good. She darted into the walk-in closet that ran the full length of the bedroom. It had a door at each end, neither of which could be locked. She closed the doors and buried herself behind the hanging clothes.

  After five agonizing minutes, her legs cramping and the air supply getting stale, the door on her left burst open and zombie-Steve plodded into the closet. She gripped the aluminum baseball bat and prepared for a battle.

  Come on, you undead-beast she thought. Just give me a clean shot and I’ll put your head in the cheap seats.

  Without incident, Steve backed out of the closet, made his way through the bathroom and into the office at the other end. Angel decided to make a break for it. She pushed her way out of the clothes and exited the closet by the other door, then through the bedroom and onto the balcony. Only 25 feet separated her from the stairs to the second floor but she would have to pass the door to the office on the way. Would Steve hear her?

  Thanking God for her relentless devotion to her workout routine, she bolted for the stairs. Almost simultaneously, the door to the office opened and Steve stepped into her escape route. They collided and both fell to the floor, Steve landing on top of her. The baseball bat rolled away and stopped against the wall, out of reach.

  For a brief moment, she was sure Steve had the look in his eye of a high school kid who was finally going to get laid…his face was inches from hers and she smelled garlic on his breath. Now he was squirming for position to bite her face. The closer he got the more foul the stench of his breath grew.

  She rolled left and broke free, scrambling to her feet. She had failed to move in the right direction, however, and her zombie-neighbor was still between her and the stairs.

  He was much slower getting to his feet than she so she cocked her leg back and swung a fierce kick toward his head. The timing was perfect. Her shinbone connected solidly with his face as his body began to rise. The resulting momentum propelled him over the rail…

  * * * * *

  Now she had trouble…the zombie from the basement had friends with him, and she had been spotted. The closest means of escape, the front door, was blocked and her options were limited.

  She could turn around and go back upstairs or try the sliding glass door to the back deck. If the door opened without a problem, she could leap over the rail and into the intracoastal twenty feet below, but if the door stuck, like it did on humid days like this, she’d be trapped.

  She turned and sprinted up the stairs, once again thankful for her obsession with the treadmill. It was not about having a firm ass anymore…now it was survival.

  Once again she found herself in the master bedroom looking for an escape route and, once again, her eyes locked on the French doors.

  “Ay yi yi,” she said. “It’s fight or flight.”

  She decided to go with flight, and stepped onto the balcony, locking the door behind her. She looked over the rail and felt a slight rush of dizziness. The water slapped against the rip-rap below. Jumping was out of the question…she would have to push herself 15 feet horizontally to avoid the rocks, and even then, the water she would land in was less than three feet deep.

  She thought about climbing down the porch rails like a ladder, but that idea was squelched by the presence of zombies on the second floor porch and more roaming around the back yard.

  She turned around and looked at the doors, which she had locked on her way out. There was no way back into the house. She was essentially trapped.

  A great blue heron glided by and landed on the roof peak of the Thompson’s house next door. Angel looked at the bird, and then gaged the distance from her porch railing to the Thompson’s roof. It didn’t look like more than eight feet, thanks to the packed layout of the neighborhood. The developers had gone to great lengths to squeeze as many million-dollar homes as possible into the plat.

  She glanced over her shoulder, through the doors to the bedroom. Three zombies were shuffling in. It was now or never.

  “If I don’t make it,” she thought, “at least they won’t get me and turn me into one of them.”

  She climbed onto the rail, grasping the column to her right. She would get one chance and one chance only.

  She glanced skyward.

  “If you’re up there…” she said, and then without finishing the thought she pushed off and flew through the air.

  The two-second flight seemed to last an hour. She had enough time to think about her mother, father and each of her three brothers. She wondered where they were and if the apocalypse had claimed them the way it had claimed her entire neighborhood. She feared for her mother the most. Her brothers could take care of themselves, but her mother was almost 80-years-old and nearly blind. She lived in an assisted living facility in St. Augustine.

  If St. Augustine had been overrun…

  She hit the roof and immediately flattened her body against it. She slid slowly backward anyway. She pressed her hands flat against the shingles and felt the heat burning her palms. She dug the rubber tips of her Reeboks into the shingles and managed to stop herself.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  There wasn’t a lot of time to waste; she couldn’t stay on the roof for too long and the sooner she got down, the greater her chances of escape.

  She began carefully inching her way to the left. Ten feet away, she could drop down to the porch roof and then swing onto the porch. The Thompsons had sturdy teak chairs on the porch; one of them could easily smash a window, granting her access to the house. Once inside, she could get outside and run for it…assuming the zombies hadn’t yet gotten in.

  It seemed to take forever to creep the ten feet. Once there, she carefully gripped the edge of the roof and swung her legs over. Her feet dangled over the surface of the porch roof. She couldn’t see how much of a drop it was, but again, it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the luxury of other options.

  She let go and braced herself for the drop. It was over in an instant—probably less than a foot.

  Without pausing to consider her accomplishment, she dropped to her knees at the edge and swung herself down to the porch. She picked up one of the chairs and heaved it through the window, then followed it into the Thompson’s bedroom.

  She had never been in their bedroom before and didn’t pause to see what she had been missing. She exited to the hall, down the stairs to the ground floor and into the garage in search of weapons.

  After some scrounging, she found a machete among Bob Thompson’s gardening tools. She hefted it and turned it over in her hand.

  “This ought to work,” she said.

  She walked back to the first floor and went to a window. Outside, there were a few zombies across the street trying to find a way into Crai
g and Adrian Miller’s house. She hoped the Millers had gotten away. Adrian was six months pregnant and Craig had just opened a new branch office for his software firm in Jacksonville. Their future was looking very bright…until this morning anyway.

  She went to another window and glanced through the blinds—more zombies approaching from the west and the same on the east. Her only means of escape was out the back of the house toward the water.

  “Can these bastards swim?” she asked.

  The sound of breaking glass shattered the quiet of the house. Two zombies staggered through the destroyed slider.

  Angel ducked behind a recliner and peered out at the unwelcomed guests. She gasped audibly when she saw Bob Thompson, himself, followed by the Millers. Adrian Miller’s pregnant belly was smeared with blood.

  Angel felt sick.

  She waited for the zombies to turn away and she sprinted for the recently created hole in the slider. She turned sideways and skipped through, but not before Adrian Miller’s hand grabbed her by the wrist. Without thinking, Angel raised the machete and hacked at the hand. It was severed cleanly halfway between the wrist and elbow. Angel ran outside and made her way to the water’s edge. As she stepped into the warm ocean water, she realized that Adrian’s hand was still gripping her wrist. She stopped and pried the cold, dead hand off of her own and dropped it into the water. Immediately, several small fish swam over to investigate.

  “Just what we need,” she said, “zombie fish.”

  She still didn’t feel comfortable standing still, so she looked around for her options. She could cross the inlet, since the tide was low, but that would put her on the strip of land separating the inlet from the intracoastal. Once there, she would basically be trapped on an island.

  She could move along the shore of the inlet toward A1A. Maybe she could flag a ride, if there was any traffic and assuming zombies couldn’t drive.

  Her other option was to go between the Thompson’s house and her own, back to the street and to her Range Rover. There was a spare key in a magnetic box under the bumper; she could make a break for it.

  Of the three, her Range Rover made the most sense.

  She switched the machete to her left hand and began creeping between the houses. She kept low and moved as slowly as she could, being careful not to make a sound.

  As she moved, she mapped out her escape plan; in the car, out to A1A and north to St. Augustine to find her mother.

  Angel didn’t know if St. Augustine had been hit by the zombies or not, but it was only a matter of time and she wasn’t going to leave her mother there one way or the other.

  She reached the corner of her house and knelt behind a large barrel-palm, scanning for undead. The neighborhood was quiet, but not in a good way. Normally there would be people jet-skiing on the inlet, neighbors washing cars, walking dogs or working on their landscaping; the peaceful sounds of quiet.

  Today, there was just silence—deadly silence.

  There were no zombies in sight. The distance between Angel and her car was less than thirty feet. It would take her about three seconds to cover the distance, another three or four to reach under and retrieve the key, then maybe two or three more to open the door and get in the car.

  Less than ten seconds, if nothing went wrong.

  She took one more look around, inhaled deeply and bolted out from behind the palm. At the back of the car, she dropped to the ground and reached under the bumper, while she continuously looked for zombies.

  Her fingers groped along the underside of the bumper…the seconds passed.

  Where was it?

  Had Steve found that one too?

  Could it have fallen off?

  Her mind began formulating an alternate plan…it was about four-tenths of a mile to A1A; she knew she could sprint the distance easily. She’d run further distances than that on the beach.

  Even as she was telling herself to get up and run for it, her fingers found the small magnetic box. She yanked it out and slid the lid back. She jumped to her feet, tossed the box over her shoulder and ran to the door.

  The silence inside the Range Rover was like heaven. She pressed the door lock button and allowed herself to take a breath. She was safe.

  She dropped the machete onto the passenger’s seat, slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The Rover fired up, as it always did and she felt the flow of air from the vents over her face. Once the stereo system came to life, the comfortable silence was pushed away by the sounds of Rush singing “Closer to the Heart”.

  She smiled faintly. The last time she was in the car she had been driving home from a girl’s night out. It was the first time in months she had actually laughed, actually felt good about life. She put the Rush CD into the stereo and listened to it at maximum volume all the way home, cherishing the memories it brought of a Rush concert during college. When the trio began playing Closer to the Heart, she had tried to hop up for a better view. A boy she didn’t even know watched her efforts for a few seconds before he offered to let her sit on his shoulders so she could see over the crowd. She held her butane lighter high and swayed back and forth to the music…allowing it to carry her away…

  She pressed the eject button on the stereo; the CD slid out and she dropped it onto the passenger’s seat. The music wasn’t going to carry her away today; it was all up to her. She was on her own.

  Static blared from the speakers. She hit the power button and killed it, then backed out of the driveway. As she slid the shifter into drive, she looked at the road separating her from A1A…and freedom. Four-tenths of a mile in the Range Rover would be a piece of cake, even with the small rotary-island halfway between here and there.

  As she began moving forward, she glanced at the speed limit sign and laughed.

  “Fifteen miles an hour my ass,” she said.

  She punched the gas and bolted away. When she approached the island, she had to slow down. If it weren’t filled with trees, she would have driven straight over it, but she would be forced to ease around it in order to avoid the trees on the island and the large boulders on the side of the road to her right.

  A golden retriever wandered into the road in front of her; she recognized it as Queenie, who belonged to the Appleton’s three houses away from her. The dog stopped in the road and looked at the approaching vehicle with an odd curiosity. Angel stopped and honked her horn. Queenie tilted her head.

  “Come on, Queenie,” she said with concern. “Get out of the road, baby.”

  Queenie didn’t move. Angel inched forward, hoping it would spur the dog into action, but it didn’t.

  She would have to go around the dog. She backed up and turned the wheel to the right, easing her foot down on the accelerator.

  A loud thud, followed by several more, jarred her concentration. In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of four zombies clawing and banging on the car. Reflexively, her foot stomped on the gas pedal. She felt a thud from the front-left tire and her mind instantly thought of Queenie.

  She craned her neck around to see if the dog was okay, and then she remembered the trees and the rocks. By the time she looked forward again, it was too late. The Range Rover slammed into a four-foot coquina boulder. It climbed up in slow motion, stopped at the top and balanced for a few seconds before slowly leaning sideways and falling to the ground.

  Angel braced herself for the explosion that would incinerate her.

  It didn’t come.

  Silence returned and she was looking at the world from a bizarre, sideways, worm’s-eye-view.

  More adrenaline surged through her and she climbed up to the passenger’s door, opened it and pushed it up and out of her way. She felt like a soldier poking his head out of a tank. The zombies were moving toward her, slowly, but steadily. She pulled herself out of the car and jumped to the ground. Her feet were moving immediately. She risked a glance over her shoulder to locate her pursers; they were fifteen feet behind and moving like turtles stuck in mud. Another quick glance at Queen
ie, but all that was visible was the dog’s hind quarters. The rest of her was pinned beneath the Rover.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said to the dog as she sprinted away.

  She could see A1A. If there were any cars going by, she’d be able to hear them, but there were no signs of life at all.

  She rounded a slight bend in the road and stopped dead in her tracks—five zombies walking abreast in the road straight ahead. When they saw her, they immediately perked up and began shuffling toward her with purpose. She thought about the machete, still in her car. She couldn’t try to run through them without a weapon; she had to find another way out.

  One of the benefits of living in a private neighborhood was knowing every inch of the layout. To her left was one of the few unfenced yards in the place. The backyard would take her directly to the parking lot of a small restaurant called The Matanzas Inlet. It would still get her to A1A, just not as fast.

  She bolted for the yard.

  She didn’t know the people who lived in the house; they had only lived here for a month or so. The original owners, the Masons, had moved to Oregon for undisclosed reasons.

  She ran along the house until she reached the back corner, where she paused to check for zombies. With none in sight, she began walking cautiously toward the rear property line and the low retaining wall separating the yard from the restaurant parking lot. From a small gardening-tool shed to her left, she heard a banging sound. She paused, listening. She heard it again, the sound of something thumping inside the shed.

  She glanced back. The zombies were still shuffling toward her, but they hadn’t reached the yard yet. She inched toward the shed.

  Another thump.

  Maybe somebody was hiding in there. Maybe it was a zombie. She froze, trying to decide what to do. It could be a child, frightened and alone. She had to check. A zombie wouldn’t be in the shed, would it? Of course, if a zombie had wandered into the shed and the door had been closed behind it, would it be able to let itself out?

  Another bang.

  “Aww, shit,” she said, as she moved toward the shed.